


Part 1

by Junglebright



Series: A Shiver of Sharks [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Death, I haven't read any of the books, I'll take all the liberties I can get, Intrigue, Manipulation, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Multiple Pov, Politics, Regret, Templars are drug addicts, Weird Magic, a moat made of shit, everyone has a bad time, it's not going to end the way you want, the worst possible and most unforgiving worldstate ever, wherein the good guys die and the bad guys win
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:35:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14665359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junglebright/pseuds/Junglebright
Summary: Everyone makes mistakes. It's what we learn from them that makes us.





	1. Florianne

**Author's Note:**

> A story lovingly abbreviated as ASS. For my loved ones, and the people I might love one day. Updates every Monday.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are few things deadlier than loneliness.

**9:40 Dragon**

_The Winter Palace, Orlais_

For Florianne, parties had always been abysmal affairs. Others enjoying their meals and horderves would discuss the textures and genius of their combinations with one another, but all of Florianne’s comments fell on deaf ears. Dancefloors would be occupied by guests executing passionate steps and twirls, but Florianne’s hand was never asked for. And although Florianne would dine on plenty of delectable secrets, it was only through her own strategic placement- because no one ever opted to confide in her.

As a teen, Florianne had hoped that this would change on her name day. Everyone would care about what she thought of her cake, would delight in dancing with her, would want to trade naughty and light-hearted scraps of information. A woman deserved no less on her name day, she’d thought. But in this, Florianne had been mistaken. Even on her name day, even in a room full of people there to celebrate her very existence… no one cared about Florianne de Chalons.

Yet Florianne still attended the parties she was invited to because she knew that if she did not no one would inquire after her, which was somehow worse than being ignored. Florianne still celebrated her name day because she knew that if she decided not to no one would try to get her to change her mind, knowledge which only served to remind her of how painfully alone she really was.

So she’d learned to manage her expectations.

Until 9:40 Dragon, the year the Empress and Grand Duke declared war with one another and divided the nation. A spark of optimism ignited in Florianne the week before her name day celebration. Being the sister of the aggressive Grand Duke and both the cousin and cabinet member of the Empress, Florianne thought that some interest may finally be paid to her. Certainly someone would question where her loyalties lied? Would she not be asked how she felt about all this? Someone would surely ask her if she could reason with her brother, or if she had some insight on dealing with him, on ending this selfish war? As the day of celebration drew near, Florianne felt the elation of certainty grow.

This year, things would be different.

Hours before the party, Florianne struggled to keep herself from smiling like a loon once the final button was in place. Her handmaidens stepped away, and Florianne turned slowly, lifted her chin, and looked at her reflection in the floor-length mirror.

Gentle teal silk, trimmed with pale silver and pearls. Florianne smoothed her hands down her sides, tracing the accentuated shape produced by the corset as she scrutinized the gown. It had folds and lines in all the right places, and made her feel like an empress.

The scandalous thought made Florianne meet her own gaze. Florianne caught the smile she’d been trying to hide splitting her face, and soon after the look of perplexion on both her handmaiden’s faces; her demeanor was usually much more subdued when preparing for a party. They must have thought this behavior unusual.

Florianne’s smile wilted. Jerking her chin up another inch, Florianne said: “Leave me now, my dears. I’ll handle the rest myself tonight.”

It was not that the handmaidens knew better than to ask Florianne if she was certain, to protest and claim that they would be more than happy to help with her hair and makeup. Their mistress was not known for having a temper- or anything, in fact. It was simply that they did not care enough about Florianne or their positions in her house to do either. The handmaidens left with a glance between themselves but without a word exchanged, Florianne watching them in the mirror all the while.

For just a moment, this behavior made Florianne doubt the conclusions she’d drawn about the way things would change tonight. When Florianne looked herself in the eye again, the doubt vanished. On the morrow, she’d have them sacked for their indifference if she so pleased.

Florianne smiled again, and daintily seated herself at her vanity. The smile remained throughout the styling of hair, the painting of her face. Only once her mask had been replaced did Florianne wrestle her expression into submission.

Arriving fashionably late drew the attention of precisely one foreign-looking individual. And while this result would perhaps be considered disappointing to most, she had still drawn the eyes of one more person than usual. Florianne took careful note of the man, and counted it as the first of what would certainly be many of the night’s victories.

For a time, her guests mingled and indulged in the many trays of finger foods carried about the hall by Florianne’s elven servants. Florianne waited patiently by a sweating ice sculpture of a swan for her name day wishes, but it seemed as though no one had realized they were supposed to come to her with any. Feeling the doubt begin to creep its cold way back into her veins, Florianne was almost slipping into her old habit of counting the various points of light in the room when someone placed themselves in front of her with an air of expectation.

A surprised smile spread her face when she recognized it as being the man from before: the one who had looked at her. For a second, Florianne realized she did not recognize the sigil on his mask- a many-headed snake. Florianne wondered how he had gotten into her party... but the thought flitted away from her like a fitful butterfly almost as quickly as it had come when he returned her smile and raised his flute of champagne to her.

“To your health, Your Highness. May you have many more happy name days,” he said in accented but otherwise correct Orlesian.

Blushing, Florianne clinked her glass with his and tipped her head in acknowledgement.

“ _Merci monsieur…?”_

“Latranis,” replied he, voice as soft as satin. Behind his mask, Florianne tracked the way his calculating amber eyes moved between her own. “Caelus Latranis.”

“What’s a Tevinter doing here?” blurted out Florianne, knowing that it was perhaps unwise to ask but unable to stop herself anyway. At once, a dozen possibilities occurred to her. Was it possible Caelus was here to represent Tevinter interests in the Orlesian Civil War? Would he act on them through her? Exhilarated, Florianne’s pulse raced.

Caelus smiled a smile that promised all the answers she could ever ask for, turned away, vanished into the crowd, and left Florianne breathless in his absence.

No one else visited her before the elves served dinner.

At the table, it was as though Florianne was not the guest of honor. Everyone leaned away from her and towards someone else, and there were whispers through her toast. Several other people made toasts- to the war and not to her. Florianne couldn't help but notice that no one talked through them.

She would have found it difficult to keep her spirits up were it not for the fact that she spotted Caelus seated nearby, who smiled when Florianne looked at him. After dinner had been served, she took this as an invitation to share her opinion with him on dinner.

“The _escargot_ was exquisitely prepared,” Florianne said.

“We do not eat slugs in my country,” said Caelus, and although it was not really feedback to her own comment Florianne was happy to accept it because Caelus maintained eye contact with her.

Florianne broke it first, unable to withstand the intensity of his stare.

Although Caelus had been seen associating with Florianne, he appeared to have no issue in interacting with the other guests. They spoke with Caelus as though they were old friends, though the conversation indicated they did not know him. Over dessert, Florianne steeped in her jealousy over his aptitude, wishing she could fit in as effortlessly as Caelus.

To try her hand at it once more, Florianne told her neighbor that the cake was quite moist. The neighbor did not listen.

One guest rose from their seat, and brought an abrupt end to the meal. They were the first to head to the dancefloor, and soon the hall echoed with the scraping of chairs being pushed over tile as the other guests followed suit. Second only to Florianne, Caelus was the last to rise.

Righting his coat, Caelus extended a hand over the table and asked: “Your Highness, may I have this dance?”

Feeling the heat creep back into her cheeks, Florianne set her hand in his and said in a voice tight with emotion: “You may.”

Caelus lead them out onto the dancefloor. The other dancers parted for them. It was difficult for Florianne not to swoon. Soon, she and Caelus were moving in time to the music- an easy waltz played on strings.

Though Florianne was bursting to speak with him, she remained quiet through one dance. At the start of the second, Caelus shifted his grip on Florianne’s waist and shamelessly brought their bodies closer together.

Caelus spoke only for her to hear: “You're the most beautiful woman here, Your Majesty.”

Florianne was aware of what such compliments often aimed to achieve, but Caelus’s cologne smelled of night and spice and his breath was sweet and warm.

“You shouldn't say such things,” Florianne said in an effort to get Caelus to say such a thing again.

Caelus grinned, wicked and cunning. Between Florianne's fingers, his tightened.

“You wanted to know what I’m doing here,” Caelus reminded Florianne.

“Yes,” breathed Florianne, heart pounding in her ears. “I did. I do.”

The dance had the turning in a full circle. Caelus’s smile grew into a grin, and he waited until the circle concluded before he said: “I came here for you.”

“Did you come to kill me?” asked Florianne. The idea didn't frighten her, not when she looked into those eyes.

Caelus's laugh was a river of gold.

“No, Your Highness,” whispered Caelus. “I came to liberate you.”

“Liberate me?” echoed Florianne, entranced by the curl of his lips around that alluring smile.

The male dancers dipped their partners low. Being supported in Caelus's strong arms sent a heat through Florianne’s neglected body.

When Caelus righted them, they were closer than ever, almost nose to nose. It wasn't decent, not for a foreigner and a member of Orlesian royalty.

Florianne held Caelus tighter.

He said: “Yes.”

“From what?” wondered Florianne.

“The shadows you’ve spent your life living in,” Caelus said, not with pity but with vehement understanding.

Though Florianne’s insignificance was no secret, for anyone to acknowledge it would lend her some significance- and so the fact that Florianne had been ignored her entire life was in itself ignored by everyone around her. Caelus speaking of it robbed Florianne of words, stunned her racing thoughts, made her feel at once as fragile as the moths on her mask, as though a sudden wind could have blown her away. Caelus’s firm hold would have stopped that from happening, which in turn only made Florianne feel as though she could melt through his fingers.

They continued to dance until Florianne found she could form thoughts again.

“I feel I’ve known you my whole life,” she breathed, dimly aware of how dangerous this confession was, aware even that she felt this way only because she was getting attention at last, aware that she’d have felt this way about anyone who asked her for a dance.

But the way Caelus smiled and hummed at her silenced all reason, quieted every warning.

“We’ve only just begun, _ma cherie_ ,” Caelus said, so confident and certain, and Florianne became endlessly drunk on him.

Whatever words transpired between them after that were lost on Florianne, the path they’d taken back to her quarters a blur. Her head had been swimming as they undressed each other, Florianne able to recall only the feel of his hands on her naked body. Florianne came back to complete awareness to the sound of Caelus’s pelvis smacking repeatedly into her rear, her cheek pressed hard into the mattress, her arms and thighs aching with the eagerness of their lovemaking. The force of Florianne’s orgasm sent her back into the fog, and when she came to they were in the dark, warm beneath her sheets. Florianne found her head on Caelus’s shoulder, her hand smoothing over his fuzzy, naked chest, his arm tucked around her.

“Did I fall asleep?” wondered Florianne.

Several seconds passed.

“No,” said Caelus, and began to trace shapes on the side of her arm with his index finger.

“What have you done to me?” Florianne accused with a smile.

Looking up at Caelus’s face, Florianne saw him smile too.

“I would like to smoke,” he said.

Caelus was already withdrawing his arm when Florianne said: “You may.”

As Florianne settled her head down on her many downy pillows, she caught the quick quirk of his lips at her permission. Florianne opted to watch the shift of his muscles beneath tanned skin instead.

Now that Florianne had seen his face and his body, she thought she must be at least twice Caelus’s age. Bloomingtide/Haring relationships were perhaps more accepted in Orlais than elsewhere in Thedas, but Florianne had only ever heard rumors or witnessed them from the sidelines. Having never been in such a relationship herself, Florianne found the embers of doubt stoking in her gut.

Florianne decided she would not feed that fire, and asked: “Have you ever been with an older woman, Caelus?”

Caelus felt after his clothes in the dark, picking up each piece and then setting it aside when it didn’t turn out to be what he wanted. In a hidden pocket in his jacket, Caelus found the slim silver case he kept his pre-rolled cigarettes in.

With her heart in her throat, Florianne watched Caelus’s straightening profile in the moonlight. Watched him open that case with the softest of _pops_ , withdraw a single cigarette, place it between his full lips, and close the case with a precise _click_. Caelus replaced the case to his pocket, and then draped his jacket over one of Florianne’s ottomans.

When Caelus turned back to her, the tip of his cigarette glowed and cast deep shadows over the planes of his angular face. Florianne saw twin points of light reflected in his eyes.

“No,” Caelus said at last.

The cigarette smoke smelled of danger. The sound of his light footsteps on the floor as Caelus returned to Florianne’s bed was the rustling of a predator stepping out of a dark jungle.

“Does that matter?” questioned Caelus, looming over the side of the bed.

A groan from the wooden frame as he settled back down beside Florianne.

“No,” Florianne answered, even though it felt like it mattered.

Caelus took a drag from his cigarette, and passed it to Florianne. Florianne sat up and took it. Hesitated, and then pressed it to her lips. She coughed out smoke. Caelus took his cigarette back and sat up too.

Pulling the sheets up to cover her breasts, Florianne glanced at Caelus and found that she was more comfortable with looking out the windows. Beyond the panes of glass, stars glittered.

“ _Escargot_ is made of snails,” Florianne said, sounding absent even in her own ears. “Not slugs.”

A heavy exhale from Caelus, a cloud of acrid smoke.

“Are they not the same thing?” asked Caelus, not sounding like he particularly cared, Florianne thought.

“No,” she said, soft.

Caelus hummed again, and this time it sounded different to Florianne’s ears. She imagined the flicking of a snake’s tongue.

“I didn’t come here to only dance and take you to bed,” said Caelus.

“You didn’t?” Florianne asked, confused by the flood of relief that washed over her then.

“No. That’s hardly liberating, is it?” Caelus looked sidelong at her, and tapped the ash from the cigarette into a glass on the nightstand beside him.

“I guess so,” Florianne replied, remembering the bright, incredible pleasure of having him inside her whilst simultaneously being unable to attach any particular image to it.

Caelus passed her the cigarette. “I’m here to shine a light on you at last, Your Majesty.”

Florianne didn’t know what to say. She took the cigarette.

“It’s time for Thedas to give you what you’ve always deserved,” said Caelus.

A pause. Florianne took a tentative drag from the cigarette and asked: “What’s that?”

“Penance,” Caelus said.

Much about what had happened tonight was beyond Florianne’s understanding. But this, she understood at once. Every time she’d been passed over for a dance, every time a congratulations had been extended to her neighbor at _her_ name day party and no such sentiment had been given to her, Florianne had felt more than just crushing disappointment. More than just sorrow and loneliness.

Florianne had felt like she wanted to stab someone in the eyes. Stab them until there were no longer eyes in their eye sockets, only bloody, vacant holes where they once had been. Anyone and everyone would have made suitable victims.

Florianne gave him this information in the way she turned her wrist in returning Caelus’s cigarette to him. He accepted both with another smile.

“I couldn’t get away with it,” Florianne said, bitter.

“Not alone,” agreed Caelus. “But you aren’t alone anymore, are you?”

Whatever Florianne might have thought or felt dissipated when Caelus put a warm hand over hers. The only things she could think of were his calluses, and to say: “No. I’m not.”

Florianne laced her fingers with his. Caelus squeezed her hand.

Caelus offered Florianne the cigarette. After taking it and passing it back to him, she said: “You’re a mage.”

“I am,” Caelus said, and nodded once.

“What are you doing here in Orlais?” asked Florianne. Again, something just beyond her grasp was forming in the back of her mind. She struggled through the smoke, the dark, the heat of his body to obtain it.

“My family made their fortune in the trade of silk and spices. My uncle managed our trade routes with Orlais.” Caelus looked at the glowing tip of the cigarette, examined it as one might their nails. “He’s died. I was his apprentice. I have his job now.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Florianne said. Caelus was too young to have seen many members of his family die, Florianne wagered. She’d seen much death in her own family.

Caelus tipped his head towards his shoulder, staring still at the cigarette. Florianne waited for him to speak, but he did not.

“It’s going to be difficult to do anything just the two of us as well,” Florianne pointed out.

“It’s not just the two of us,” Caelus said. He blinked slowly, righted his head, and ashed the cigarette.

Florianne frowned, feeling a sudden wave of irritation. She didn’t like the idea of having to share Caelus with anyone else, didn’t like to think of all the hidden strings. “Then what’s going on?”

“A new world order is on its way.” Caelus said it with soft, effortless passion. Florianne narrowed her eyes, but then Caelus’s eyes were on hers and his lips were pressed to the back of her hand and whatever was strange about what he’d said suddenly wasn’t so strange at all. “You are the song to be played at the end of it, and I am but the conductor of your orchestra.”

It became important that she ask a question, but Caelus’s words left Florianne’s mind floundering. She awkwardly managed: “But why? Why me?”

It seemed ludicrous that there was a contingent of mysterious people who had been plotting her glory for her without her knowledge. That was the stuff of dreams, and dreams were childish and stupid and painful. Florianne knew that better than most.

“Because no one gives a shit about you, _ma cherie_ ,” Caelus said, and laid their hands back down on the bed. “Which puts you in the perfect position to enact your revenge, and usher in a new age.”

“I’m just a piece in your Game,” Florianne said, finally realizing what he’d been distracting her from all night. It should have stung. It should have made her angry. No one had ever included her before though, not like this. “Am I a pawn to be thrown away?”

Caelus grinned, laughed. The sound sent fire through Florianne, made being a part of this Game seem suddenly irresistible.

“No, Your Majesty. No,” said Caelus, voice tight with amusement. “You’re the queen. When this is over, you’ll be on the throne. You’ll rule Orlais. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”

Florianne froze. She stopped seeing anything. All sensory input ceased. Her body went numb.

Florianne went naked from the bed and walked around the piles of discarded clothes to the balcony doors. She stood there a long time.

Then said: “Yes.”

“Then the Elder One will make it so,” Caelus said, and although she could not see him Florianne heard the smile in his words.

“Who’s the Elder One?” asked Florianne, feeling empty in a way she hadn’t before. A blank slate on which anything could be written.

“He is a God,” Caelus said.

“I’ve never heard of him.”

That smile again: “He’s new.”

“What’s in it for him if I’m on the throne?” Florianne counted the stars visible in the square of night beyond her window.

“You’ll enact His will,” answered Caelus. In his tone there was not the anticipation of an argument from her, and why should there be? Florianne knew what it took to manage an empire but had never had the mind for it, only the desire for the power, the recognition, the devotion and adoration.

“What’s in it for you, Caelus?”

Shagging an old woman didn’t sound like much of a reward, even when she was that old woman, and even if that old woman wound up being the Empress of Orlais.

“A different sort of power and empire,” Caelus said.

“You don’t love me,” Florianne said. She became aware of the cold seeping in through the glass, and how it made her nipples hard almost to the point of pain. Covering them with her palms, she put her back to the doors.

“No,” said Caelus.

“I don't love you,” Florianne told him.

“I wouldn't expect you to, Your Majesty.”

“Then I think we’ll make good partners,” said Florianne. She dropped her hands to her sides and went back to the bed. “Now that we've been honest with each other.”

Florianne knew it would be the last time they would be. The Game had begun.

“What is the first move?” asked Florianne, throwing back the covers and climbing into bed.

“Exhaust both sides of the war effort. The people will grow hungry for a resolution, and sour to both Celene and Gaspard,” Caelus said, said like he was ordering only breakfast from a café instead of the collapse of an empire.

Florianne adjusted the covers over her legs, tilted her head at the shape of her feet hidden beneath the fabric.

“That won’t be difficult,” said Florianne after a moment of consideration, and watched Caelus slip a hand under the sheets. “Celene’s cabinet is as eager as Gaspard to shed blood. They’ll use anything as an excuse to press the offensive.”

Caelus’s hand passed over her thigh. He leaned into Florianne, and Florianne leaned into him.

“Then we’ll give them good excuses,” Caelus said, every word brushing against Florianne’s lips.

Together, they smiled, and as Caelus kissed her Florianne recalled that her prediction for this year’s name day had turned out to be entirely correct: things were different now indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr @ [junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/).


	2. Aul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say rules are made to be broken. One man sets them ablaze.

**9:41 Dragon**

_Minrathous, Tevinter_

“Can you do that?” Aul asked, leaning forward across his mahogany desk to cover Lucius’s hand with his own.

“Yes,” said Lucius.

Lucius had once been a commander in the army, known for his gruff and monotonous voice. But it changed behind closed doors when Lucius spoke with Aul- along with everything else about him. Lucius spoke as though to a precious newborn lamb, rough fingers touching Aul as softly as a blanket of fresh snow. The impassive expression so commonly found on his long face morphed into something eager, something desperate.

“Lucius…” Aul frowned, concern creasing his brow. He leaned back, withdrawing his hand.

“It would make you happy,” pressed Lucius, leaning in, seeking Aul’s hand. “I want to give you the seat. You could do so much good.”

“It’s unprecedented,” Aul warned with a shake of his head, but didn’t pull his hand away from Lucius again.

“So are you,” Lucius said.

They looked at one another, Lucius’s brown eyes searching Aul’s black ones.

“I can pass the seat to any family member,” insisted Lucius.

Becoming family had been another one of Lucius’s ideas, some twenty-odd years ago. Lucius’s wife had a deaf older sister her parents had been unable to marry off to any noble, and it had been Lucius who proposed she and Aul marry. The parents had been strongly out of favor, but the outrageous dowry Lucius had happily provided changed their minds, made them brothers-in-law, and elevated Aul’s standing to heights he shouldn’t have been allowed.

“You’re absolutely certain you don’t want it?” Aul asked again.

“Yes,” promised Lucius. “You know me. I don’t have the mind or patience for politics.”

That much was true. Lucius had barely succeeded as a commander in terms of strategy and victories- he would struggle in Tevinter’s rabid political scene, and probably with less fortunate results.

“Okay,” Aul relented. “If you pass your seat in the Magisterium to me, I’ll accept.”

Lucius grinned, elated. He pressed a kiss to Aul’s dark cheek, and even in the total privacy of Aul’s Circle office Lucius hesitated in performing the display of affection, felt exhilarated for following through with it.

“Thank you,” Lucius said.

Aul smiled at him. “Oh, anything for you _amatus_.”

Lucius glowed with pride.

“I should go,” said Lucius, standing. “Make it official.”

In his gaze, Aul could see all the things he would rather spend his time doing instead. Mostly, what he’d rather be doing was Aul. He could tell Lucius was standing there, waiting for Aul to give him the signal that it was time to bend him over his desk and ravage him.

The elf flicked his black eyes down to Lucius’s mouth, then back up his face. Didn’t get up from his seat.

“You should.”

Lucius smiled wider, stood there a second longer. Then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’m going now.”

A coy smile from Aul. “I’ll see you soon.”

Lucius nodded again, and left the office. As usual, he closed the door behind him with more force than was necessary. The bang wiped the smile off Aul’s face.

After giving the door a glare, Aul went back to grading papers.

Two hours later, he received a message from one of the other magisters: Nero Commoda. He was young, and had earned his place in the Magisterium simply by being his grandmother's favorite. Aul had taught him anatomy some fifteen years ago, and ever since had been in vague, sporadic contact with Nero in the form of racist hate mail and death threats.

Aul expected that this letter would be much the same. He set aside his students’ papers and gave the letter his immediate attention.

It read: ‘You don't belong with us, knife-ear. You and Decipius are going to regret the little deal you’ve made if you don’t resign.’

Aul read the letter twice. Neatly folded it. Returned it to its envelope. And then filed it away in a drawer filled with separate, labeled files reserved for just this type of mail.

Nero’s file was the largest.

By the time he was finished with that, Aul's official papers and titlework arrived by courier. After tipping the courier, these deliveries were filed away as well.

Then Aul went home to enjoy a modest celebration with his family and the Decipiuses. Lucius’s eldest son (and Aul’s godson) Marcus was the first to leave- barely eating a bite before dashing out the door for parts unknown. Several hours later, Lucius’s wife Angela and their infant (also Aul's godson) Quinton departed as well. With Lucius’s help, Aul put his own six children (Lucius’s godchildren) to bed.

And Aul and Lucius were alone once more.

In his bedroom, Aul and Lucius shared a drink. Aul looked out at the night sky, the stars dimmed by the light of the city.

Lucius got drunk and tried to coax Aul out of his clothing. For the better part of the last three decades, they had been in a sexual relationship with one another. For Lucius, it was simultaneously his greatest need, secret, and shame. It was what the entire relationship was preoccupied with, and for a long time Aul had weathered Lucius’s whims.

“Not tonight,” Aul said, closing his hand over Lucius’s and gently removing it from his chest. Before Aul even said it, he knew what the outcome would be.

Lucius stiffened. When he spoke, it was with a raised voice: “Why not?”

“Shh,” Aul soothed, arching a brow and looking sidelong at Lucius. “You’ll wake the baby.”

That smitten shepherd morphed back in to the army commander before Aul's very eyes.

“Really, Aul? After what I did for you today?”

A thin smile from the elf, and he turned bodily to face the other man. Lucius had several inches on Aul, but an upward tilt of Aul’s dimpled chin robbed Lucius of whatever authority that height difference would have otherwise afforded him.

“Yes,” Aul said, the single syllable measured and slow, “Even after what you did today.”

Lucius shoved Aul hard in the chest, with enough force to wind him, stagger him down to one knee, make him drop his crystal glass. It shattered on the stone floor. The crash woke the baby, and in the other room he began to cry.

But there would be no going to him now. Lucius stood between Aul and the door, very purposefully blocking the way out.

 _“For you,”_ snarled Lucius, lips twitching away from his ugly and crooked teeth. “What I did _for you_.”

Aul looked between Lucius’s eyes. And smiled. It was not the smile of a man afraid, afraid and being forced to cope with forces beyond his control.

“For me,” Aul corrected softly, his words just audible over the sobbing of his infant. “What you did for me.”

Above him, Lucius huffed like a bull, gaze working over the shape of Aul with an old and familiar fear.

They both knew what was going to happen next.

Aul reached for Lucius. Lucius stepped forward, glass crunching under his boots.

Aul felt the shape of his hips; they’d gotten softer and more round since Lucius had left the army and taken a teaching position at the Circle.

Aul had kept in shape.

The texture of Lucius’s clothing and the leather of his belt were not as fine as Aul's own, even though Lucius had the greater income and fewer mouths to feed.

Aul understood the importance of appearances.

Aul craned his neck to look up at Lucius. Though the motion had been practiced countless times over the years, Aul undid Lucius’s belt as though it hadn't been, as though this was all new to him. The leather fell away with a whisper. The buckle hit the floor with a _ting_. When Aul pushed back the fabric of Lucius’s overcoat, a powerful shiver rippled through the human. Lucius barely had the consciousness to plant his hands on his hips, and keep the coat at bay.

The baby continued sobbing, the cries becoming guttural, punctuated with deep breaths.

Aul did not pause. He did watch his fingers fumble at the bone buttons on the human’s breeches, undoing them one at a time with meticulous care. Every light touch made Lucius draw in a sharp breath. Aul could tell by the way Lucius’s fingers twitched and his muscles tensed that he was rapidly becoming overwhelmed by the moment.

Looking back up at him, kneeling amongst the shards of glass and spilled wine, Aul held Lucius’s gaze as he reached into his breeches and pulled out his hard prick. Aul glanced between the purple, swollen head and Lucius’s face, acutely aware of the pain throbbing in his knee from when it’d hit the floor after Lucius pushed him, of the faint but unmistakable and rank scent of sweat and urine, of the damp heat clenched in his hand.

Unable to wait any longer, Lucius put a hand at the back of Aul’s skull and guided him where he wanted him with a huff.

The baby had stopped crying, and could only be heard hiccuping occasionally by the time it was finished.

As Lucius softened, Aul smoothed aside his mess of pubic hair and bit him just above the line of it. Lucius hissed and jumped in his skin, fingers clenching tight in Aul’s hair.

“What?” he demanded.

Aul smiled innocently up at Lucius, pursing his lips in a brief imitation of a kiss. “So you have something to remember me by,” he explained.

Lip twitching, Lucius turned away and pushed himself back into his breeches, buttoned up, gathered his belt off the floor. Aul watched this a moment, and then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began to clean up the mess left by his broken wine glass.

The baby was quiet now.

“It’s late,” Lucius said by way of farewell once he was done redressing. He stomped off for the door.

Still on his knees, Aul lifted his head and said before Lucius stepped out the room: “We should arrange a playdate for Quinton and Julius this weekend.”

Lucius stopped and frowned at Aul. “Why?”

“Julius has _varicellae_ ,” Aul said.

Lucius’s frown exaggerated. “I didn’t notice.”

Smiling, Aul teased: “How much attention did you pay him tonight?”

“Not much,” conceded Lucius.

Aul shrugged. “It’s better for them to catch it young.”

“Yes,” agreed Lucius, and then paused, eyes rolling upward to consider something that any decent father would find concerning. “Marcus has never had it.”

Lifting his eyebrows, Aul said: “Hasn’t he? Well, if he catches it as well we’ll have to keep a close eye on him. _Varicellae_ has been known to kill adults.”

Lucius nodded. Paused again and bit his upper lip. “You’d take care of him if that happened, though.”

Knight Enchanters were known for their exceptional healing powers, and Aul went a step beyond all that with an understanding and study of microbial life forms and their impact on the body. Aul was the very epitome of all a Knight Enchanter could be and more- but the shape of his ears and nose meant that his work was not taken seriously by… well, anyone.

“You know I’d do what I could,” Aul assured Lucius with a smile.

 Lucius nodded, and patted the doorframe. “I’ll tell Angela,” he said, and left.

 Aul paused in his cleaning, listening to the sound of Lucius’s retreating footsteps, listening for the sound of his front door closing. He remained still a minute after all had fallen quiet, eyes losing their focus.

 He finished cleaning up the mess. Disposed of the glass. And went to check on Julius.

 Standing over the child’s crib, even in the dark it was obvious that the boy’s tender skin was without blemish. Aul took Julius’s small, chubby arm in hand, stroked that soft, smooth skin.

 Three more nights until the weekend.

 Aul retired to his laboratory for the night.

Two days later, Aul was preparing dinner with his gaggle of children in one of their sunny kitchens. This was their daily routine, for although all but the squib twin and infant attended school in the Circle Aul taught at, their schedules didn’t allow much room for family time. Cooking together kept the family together.

Usually, Aul would ask each child how their days went, and what they learned. Today he was tired, and did not waste what precious energy he had left on conversation. The children did not appear to notice, happily asking one another what Aul did not.

 Junia- the squib- tended to Julius, entertaining him and making sure he didn’t fall over and break his head. Neela- Junia’s twin- chopped vegetables with Donna and Lola. Antony- Aul’s only other boy- sliced the meat. Exhausted, Aul prepared the sauce and, once that was done with, Julius’s mash. He was still too young to eat completely solid foods, and since his mother had died required a special concoction of nutrients.

 Aul uncorked the vial and emptied its contents into Julius’s bowl. With a fork, he thoroughly stirred the liquid in. A shove of the bowl towards Junia, and she dutifully took to spoon-feeding her brother after a quick glance at her father.

 “You’ll put the others to bed tonight,” Aul murmured to her, and tasked himself with frying the meat.

 “Yes, father,” said Junia to his back. Although she was born after her twin (which Aul and his wife had attributed to Junia’s lack of magical ability), Junia was somehow older than Neela- and the rest of her siblings. Caring for them often fell onto her shoulders since their mother’s passing, and if Junia had complaints about this she did not make them in her father’s hearing.

 Aul ate dinner without tasting it.

 When he woke the next morning, Aul felt himself again.

In the mornings, it was common for Aul to have breakfast with Junia, whose school started earlier than the others’. Usually it passed in silence, Aul reading through messages or planning out his lessons for the week, but sometimes Junia tried to make tedious conversation.

 Today, she tried to catch her father’s gaze over her bowl of porridge, eyebrows tight with concern. Aul offered her a faint smile, and lifted his brows in invitation for Junia to speak.

 “Julius has _varicellae_ ,” Junia said. “I think. He has little red bubbles on his arms.”

 “Hm,” hummed Aul, and lowered his chin in acknowledgment of this information. When Junia continued to look worried, Aul smiled for her again and said: “It looks worse than it is. He’ll be okay.”

 Junia’s mouth twisted with uncertainty.

 “You remember when Donna had _varicellae_ , don’t you?” Aul asked, setting down the letter he’d been reading. “You were six, and she was your brother’s age then.”

 “I remember mom put her in the bath a lot,” Junia said, looking down at her porridge. Most would miss it, but Aul could detect the subtle traces of irritation in his daughter’s tone, which seemed to say that this wasn’t the same, that Donna’s pox hadn’t been as important as her brother’s.

 “Oatmeal helps to soothe the dryness,” Aul explained. “I’m sure Julius would appreciate an oatmeal bath, if you’d like to give him one.”

 Aul watched Junia’s lips press into a line, and then a pout. She nodded. “When I get home from school,” Junia decided.

 “After,” corrected Aul. “He has a playdate with Quinton before you come home.”

 “Is Angela going to want him to play with Julius if he’s sick?” Junia asked skeptically.

 “Parents purposefully give their children the pox all the time,” said Aul.

 “That’s terrible,” opined Junia.

 “It’s so they don’t catch it when they’re older and die, actually.”

 “Oh.”

 “Oh,” Aul agreed, and returned to reading his letter.

 “Okay then,” said Junia. “After his playdate I’ll give him an oatmeal bath.”

 “He’ll be pleased, I’m sure,” replied Aul, glancing over the parchment at Junia. She looked rather pleased herself, now.

Aul’s students asked him fewer questions than his daughter had at breakfast throughout the day, which Aul was always thankful for. Some of the other professors claimed that there was no such thing as a stupid question, but those professors obviously had never been asked in earnest by a grown man where a woman kept her testicles hidden.

 If there ever was a woman to have balls though, it was Angela. She possessed a moxy that no other woman Aul had ever met did, and a tongue so sharp it’d draw blood.

 ‘You should have married me,’ Aul had told her on her wedding night as they shared the second dance, when it was too late to change anything.

 It was a sentiment Aul had never before voiced, and one that Lucius had never learned of. Though Lucius had such a strong aversion to women that Aul had serious doubts about Lucius’s ability to consummate his marriage, Aul also knew that he was fiercely possessive of what was his. Lucius would have cut out Aul’s tongue for daring to express the idea.

 Angela knew that, even then. Her eyes had glittered with it, a challenge to anyone and everyone.

 But she’d only laughed at him, laughed and said: ‘Dear, we’d rule the world together- if only you weren’t an elf fucking my husband.’

Aul had grinned and laughed with her then, and it was a habit they continued through the years- laughing together at the absurdity of it all. Their time together at the playdate was no different: Angela laughed when Aul told her of the amount of death threats he’d received since three days ago, and Aul laughed when she shared that her parents had asked if and when she’d be having another baby.

 They drank too much and watched their boys fall all over themselves and each other, pull hair and cry about it.

 After a couple of hours, Angela took Quinton and tottered home.

 Junia arrived at the house from school an hour after that. Aul was in his study, penning a letter when she popped her head in the door to say: “I’m going to give Julius a bath now.”

 “As you wish, my sweetest daughter,” Aul said, pausing in his writing but without looking up.

 “I love you daddy,” said Junia.

 Aul smiled.

 “I love you too, Junia,” he said. “I love you very much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to make playlists for my characters. [Here's Aul's](https://open.spotify.com/user/11172294377/playlist/7aDveOkDfmzBwdtspG5Hqw?si=5PVJuVVORtedJJyVD4NBxw).
> 
> Find me on Tumblr @ [junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/).


	3. Solas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is not as easy as he first presumed.

_Haven, Ferelden_

The cruel irony of it all was that Solas had asked for this.

“What do you want?” Ser Ganon had asked him.

“Time with him. I can heal him. I might be able to learn something about the mark on his hand,” Solas had said to the three of them.

“Why can’t you do that here?” Seeker Pentaghast had questioned. The amount of trust she had for Solas surpassed that of the survivor by only a thin hair, given the fact that Solas was not also in manacles.

“Not very easily,” Solas had admitted. Gesturing at the survivor, Solas had explained: “Whatever’s on his hand is killing him. He needs medical attention, and this environment is not conducive to dispensing it.”

Ser Ganon had exchanged a look of doubt with his second-in-command Ser Feardorcha, and Solas had seen how Seeker Pentaghast had made her decision based on that single moment of silent deliberation.

“Well you won’t do it alone,” Seeker Pentaghast had decided.

That was how he’d wound up in a shack with a Templar glued to his side.

Upon reflection of his misstep, Solas found the strength to laugh over it. Solas thought how it must look to watchful Ser Feardorcha: a vile apostate, the image of everything he’d been raised to hate and fear, laughing over the near-motionless body of the one person everyone in Haven thought had some answers to a chaos they could not comprehend.

But knowing how it looked only made it harder for Solas to keep a straight face.

Solas cleared his throat, rolled his lips, and fell quiet. He refocused his healing efforts, trying to soothe that green wound on the human’s hand like he would a burn.

Ser Feardorcha watched him.

All the Templars, Solas had not failed to notice, had eye sockets made dark from lyrium abuse, and glassy eyes. Ser Ganon and Ser Feardorcha in particular didn’t appear to blink much. Perhaps it was meant to unnerve, but Solas mostly wondered how their eyes didn’t shrivel up and fall out their heads.

“I know him,” Ser Feardorcha said.

 Solas jolted at the sound of the Templar’s deep but strangely soft voice, and looked at him with raised brows. To his recollection, this was the first time he’d heard Ser Feardorcha say anything. Solas hadn’t even seen him speaking to anyone else when he’d had the fortune of being a safe distance from him.

 “You know him?”

 Ser Feardorcha looked between the prone survivor and Solas. Nodded.

 Lifting his brows higher, Solas shook his head. “How?” he prompted.

 “We were friends. When we were... small,” said the Templar.

 Ser Feardorcha’s way of speaking gave Solas the impression of someone who had used his words too infrequently, and had started to forget them as a result. As well, the way he stared at Solas made him feel as though the Templar expected something of him- the way a mabari expects its owner to throw a ball dropped at their feet.

Solas arched an eyebrow, gray gaze flicking over the Templar’s pale, freckled face. The elf had a hard time imaging Ser Feardorcha ever being small; both he and Ser Ganon were impossibly wide people, as well as the tallest Solas had ever seen. The only difference between the two of them thus far appeared to be their age and hair: Ser Ganon being bald and in Solas’s age range, Ser Feardorcha having a head full of long, black hair and at least a dozen years younger.

 “I see,” Solas said, unsure of what was safe to say in front of this man. He tried a smile, and allowed the Templar a moment to decide how he felt about it.

 Ser Feardorcha didn’t react at all. Solas thought it safe to press for more information, but just as he was about to ask the survivor’s name Ser Feardorcha posed a question of his own: “What’s the thing on his hand?“

 “It’s linked to the tear in the sky, I suspect,” said Solas. “On occasion its energy flares, and the Mark grows… larger. I can sense the tear in the sky reacting when it does. The chances of the two being unrelated to one another are low.”

 “I’ve never seen magic like this before,” Ser Feardorcha said. It was one of the few moments of his existence that Solas could not fault someone for their obvious unease of magic.

 “Nor have I,” said Solas.

 Ser Feardorcha frowned at this, but said nothing more.

 Speaking slowly, so as not to startle the Templar, Solas asked with a tilt of his head towards the bed: “What’s his name?”

 “He’s Maxwell,” said Ser Feardorcha. This time, when he looked at Maxwell he did not look away.

 Solas’s shoulders slumped.

 “Just Maxwell?”

 “Maxwell Trevelyan,” Ser Feardorcha said, the volume of his voice decreasing.

 “Maxwell is a mage,” said Solas, taking this opportunity to openly examine Ser Feardorcha’s face and test the Templar’s powers of observation.

 “Yes,” replied the Templar, the final letter coming out as a sharp click of his teeth. Solas witnessed the way his nostrils flared, the clenching of his jaw. All too soon, Ser Feardorcha’s attention was affixed to Solas once more. It was Ser Feardorcha’s turn to arch a critical brow. “Shouldn’t you be able to sense that about him? Just as any Templar could?”

Those glazed eyes suddenly were alight and alive, darting back and forth between Solas’s with the heat of accusation. Solas’s earlier impression of Ser Feardorcha having forgotten how to speak was banished- the Templar’s words came hard and fast now, precise and with the show of plenty of teeth.

 “Yes,” Solas answered, shoulders climbing back up.

 “Then why are you asking?” Ser Feardorcha demanded to know before Solas had the opportunity to tell him.

 Pulling in a breath through his nose, Solas measured his reply with care: “The power of the anomaly on his hand is such that I thought it possible to confuse him for a mage, even if he was not one.”

 Ser Feardorcha’s eyes narrowed, and he curled his upper lip at Solas.

 “I don’t _like_ you,” said Ser Feardorcha.

 Feigning surprise over this sudden but not unexpected hostility perhaps would have served him better, but what Solas said was: “You’re not required to.”

Sniffing at something Solas couldn’t smell, Ser Feardorcha growled and rose to his feet in a rattle of steel plate. Solas watched him. Suspected that at least flinching away from him might have eased Ser Feardorcha’s ire some, but Solas didn’t do that either. Ser Feardorcha stormed out the shack, fur cloak snapping in his wake.

Solas listened, but either the door was too thick for Solas to properly hear the outside or Ser Feardorcha hadn’t gone anywhere, and lurked just outside that door. Neither prospect was comforting.

Solas pushed Ser Feardorcha from his mind, and continued his study of Maxwell and his Mark.

Some time later, Ser Ganon entered the shack. The Templar stood in front of the door. He pulled his hand repeatedly down a goatee that matched the one Ser Feardorcha had, and made Solas listen to the rasp of the graying bristles against worn hands.

Ser Ganon eventually said: “Ser Feardorcha is not required to like you.”

Now that he was alone with him, Solas realized there was one more difference between Ser Ganon and his lackey: the accent. Ser Ganon’s differed from Ser Feardorcha’s just barely, but Solas detected in the pronunciation of his syllables that the Common Tongue was not his first language.

Solas looked over his shoulder at Ser Ganon, trying to keep his exasperation at bay. “No,” he agreed.

Ser Ganon made a noise, a “mm” that came out mostly in the push of breath out his nose. The Templar’s eyes, so brown they were almost black, drifted lazily off to one corner of the ceiling. Solas watched him nod at nothing, hand pausing over his chin.

Just as suddenly as he arrived, Ser Ganon left the shack… but didn’t really leave.

With Ser Ganon gone, Solas felt it safe to roll his eyes.

In the stretch of time that followed, Solas walked the exhausted, frost-covered paths of Haven. In spite of the festering wound hanging in the sky above- or perhaps because of it, the village was still. Still, but not empty. On the air Solas smelled hearthfire, roasting apples. On his tongue, he tasted fresh rosemary.

Solas found an old woman outside the Chantry. The sight of her filled him with a joy and an ache. His vessel could not contain the feeling, and it ran over in his smile. She returned his smile with perfect understanding.

“You shouldn’t stay here,” she said. Solas comprehended the words themselves as a warning, but her voice didn’t match the look on her face and he couldn’t make out why anyone wouldn’t want to stay here.

It was so beautiful.

“It doesn’t last,” she said with a single, sympathetic shake of her head. “Doom lives in the peaks.”

Behind him came the sound of air beneath rippling leather. A great shadow passed over them, and even though Solas spun on his heel to find the source it was already gone when he looked skyward. Solas turned back to the woman, but she’d never been there.

A fierce wind blew him into the side of the Chantry. Snow pelted him in the back, and the cold tore through all his layers and sank like teeth into his bones. Solas tried to make it to the Chantry’s door, but the building collapsed just as soon as his fingers touched the the door. He fell into a drift of powdery snow. The wind tossed a layer of snow over him, and Solas was buried in a second flat. It felt as though he’d been beneath that weight for an age, and just as he felt as though he couldn’t rise again Solas remembered it was imperative that he did. Summoning all of his strength, he pushed himself up and out of the snow.

He sucked down a deep breath, realizing then that he hadn’t breathed since he couldn’t recall when.

And that he was no longer in Haven.

Rubble dotted the landscape. Fire burned everywhere, but was always out of sight when he tried to look at it. Corpses dotted the decimated landscape, twisted into shapes of endless agony by a frightened inferno.

“It was an accident,” a voice said. It belonged to a boy, but also a man, but Solas could not find him no matter where he looked.

“So were you,” Solas said, pitying himself, hating himself, and raging. His hands shook, and when he turned his palms over to look at them he saw the lines of his palms were filled with embers and blood.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” said the voice, having grown smaller still.

“Be gone from here,” Solas ordered, clenching his fists.

“He’s been watching me,” Maxwell said, stepping up to Solas’s side as though he’d known him like he knew… who? Someone else.

Frowning, Solas examined the shape of the human for inconsistencies. Maxwell had only two hands, two feet, the right number of eyes and just the one mouth. But his back was where his front should be and everything was sideways.

“He won’t be able to watch you if you wake up,” Solas said.

“Won’t he?” asked Maxwell, sad. Doubtful.

“Not like he can here,” Solas promised him.

Instead of waking up, Maxwell asked: “What did he do to me?”

Solas’s lip twitched in a snarl that Maxwell didn’t notice. “I don’t know.”

Corypheus had been trying to make a key, so far as Solas had understood it. A key to a door where there once had been none, a door that had been erected as an accident in conscience, a door that Corypheus had never not thought of as always existing. The short-sighted child.

But even understanding Corypheus as he did, Solas could make no sense of Maxwell’s possession of that key. It didn’t make sense that Maxwell survived a blast that had been strong enough to nearly level a mountain, that should have been strong enough to kill a creature older than living memory.

“I shouldn’t be alive,” gleaned Maxwell.

“No,” agreed Solas.

Maxwell said nothing in response to that. Solas waited for Maxwell to find something to say.

“I don’t remember who I am,” Maxwell provided reluctantly.

Something clawed at Solas’s ribcage, something that wanted _out_. Solas said: “You’re not required to.”

Solas cupped a hand to Maxwell’s cheek.

And pushed him over.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed a gasp out of Solas. He sat bolt upright, and had to do a double take at the shape looming over him. Solas rubbed the sleep from his eyes and squinted up at Ser Feardorcha, who looked no more friendly this morning than he had the night before.

“You fell asleep,” said Ser Feardorcha.

To make Ser Feardorcha like him even less, Solas said: “I’m prone to doing just that, actually.”

Solas’s heart leapt into his throat when someone’s hand clenched around his, and it was only then that Solas realized he must have taken Maxwell’s hand sometime in the night. Maxwell had regained consciousness, blue eyes open and fixed on the Templar.

“Hi, Feardorcha,” Maxwell said around a delighted smile.

Solas had to bite back the urge to tell Maxwell that he actually wasn’t supposed to remember who he was.

“Hi Maxwelll,” said Ser Feardorcha.

Ser Feardorcha and Solas looked at one another. The Templar opened his mouth as though to speak, but only breathed instead. Then left.

Solas watched him leave.

Maxwell pulled his hand free of Solas’s, and brought the elf’s attention back to him.

“How are you feeling?” Solas asked.

“My head hurts,” allowed Maxwell. Wrinkling his nose, Maxwell looked as though he was struggling to recall a word he had on the tip of his tongue.

“I’m Solas,” said Solas.

“Oh,” Maxwell said, like that’d been the word he was looking for. “I’m Maxwell.”

“I know. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Maxwell frowned, an expression that moved his mouth to one corner of his face and made him look up at the ceiling. He remained that way a moment. Then said: “I’m not sure.”

Maxwell smiled again.

Solas’s eyebrows raised an inch. “Are you in pain? Aside from your head?”

In order to answer this question, Maxwell had to frown once more.

“Yes,” decided Maxwell, who then looked at his left hand as though he’d noticed for the first time that he had one. “My hand hurts!”

Solas blinked when the smile came back, and allowed one of his own to lift the corners of his mouth.

“I imagine it would,” Solas said. Nodding to the glowing mark, he said: “It’s killing you.”

“It is?” Maxwell asked with more incredulity than Solas had thought possible for a person to muster.

“Yes.”

“Well that isn’t very fun,” said Maxwell.

Solas cleared his throat, and vacated his chair. Joints cracked, bones ached. In stretching, he turned his back to Maxwell so the human couldn’t see the look of utter confusion on Solas’s face. He’d expected to be asked for an explanation at the least, but Solas supposed he could make do with this too.

A yawn and a deep breath, and Solas offered: “I’ve an idea on how to stop it. We’ll see how amenable to trying it Seeker Pentaghast is.”

Solas already had a feeling that Maxwell wouldn’t be opposed to it; it didn’t look as though he was bothered by much.

Ser Ganon and Ser Feardorcha appeared then. The latter took Maxwell away, while the former remained. Ser Ganon took up position in front of the door, and resumed looking at the room as though he expected it to start hurling insults at him.

“The Breach has gotten bigger,” shared Ser Ganon.

Solas had not heard this word used before in this context, but did not take a genius to intuit the meaning.

“So has the Mark on Maxwell’s hand,” Solas shared matter-of-factly, not liking that he was having to repeat himself. “The two are connected, somehow.”

“That’s suspicious,” said Ser Ganon.

“Indeed it is,” agreed Solas.

A ragged exhale out Ser Ganon’s nose, and Solas watched as those eyebrows sank low over the Templar’s roaming eyes.

“The Breach needs to be closed,” Solas continued, “I suspect Maxwell will be able to manage that with the Mark, if we get him close enough.”

Ser Ganon’s eyebrows pinched together. His frown pushed another breath out his nose, and then Ser Ganon said: “We’ll manage that.”

“Good,” said Solas. “I’d like to eat now.”

The Templar gave Solas a withering look that said time spent on eating was time wasted, but he moved out of the way of the door.

Solas didn’t see Ser Ganon again until the end of the day, after the grueling journey to the remains of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and after the interrogation that ensued when Maxwell had… managed to stop the Breach, but failed to remain in one piece in the process.

In the end, Seeker Pentaghast concluded that Solas hadn’t mislead her: the Mark had halted the Breach’s progress as Solas had theorized, and he never had promised that Maxwell would survive the process.

Though Solas had known, had known as soon as he’d seen Maxwell in the Fade. Some essential but unseen piece of him had been broken (and if Solas didn’t know any better, he would have thought it’d been Maxwell’s brain). Maxwell had been held together by only a stitch, and the force of the magic it took to stop the Breach had simply let it loose.

But he didn’t need to share that with anyone, least of all the Seeker and her Templar dogs. They already understood so little. Solas opted to agree with Seeker Pentaghast that Maxwell’s loss was a terrible one, and with that she finally released him from her questioning.

On Solas’s way out the Chantry, he spotted Ser Ganon and Ser Feardorcha through a door standing ajar by a handful of inches. Solas couldn’t make out the words- nor cared to- but could tell by the cadence of the words that it was only Ser Ganon speaking. Ser Ganon’s back faced the door, and just over his shoulder Solas saw the ashen face of Ser Feardorcha.

Solas and Ser Feardorcha locked eyes. Ever since the bittersweet victory at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, Ser Feardorcha’s vacant eyes were once more alive, alive and as rabid as the thing living in Solas.

Their eyes met only for an instant. But that was all it took for them to communicate a simple message: they were never going to like one another. They weren’t required to.

Solas broke their eye contact with a toothy smile, and as he passed that door he felt those eyes follow him out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to lie, I started writing this entire story because my love for Solas is deep and I just had to write something with him. I might not see him as everyone else does, but I hope my interpretation of him is enjoyed nonetheless.
> 
> Find me on Tumblr @ [junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Solas has a playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/11172294377/playlist/5QC1NR3anWttbR5E0S08xz?si=r9y7u_4lQeyU4lqQqFb4Fw).


	4. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You will never find belonging so long as you are looking for it.

_In a Dream_

The simplest way for such an extensive network to keep in touch was not through pen and parchment and secret meetings in old warehouses, but rather the Fade. For Silence, every method had a thread of commonality: she was always despised and reviled, unwelcome even when in the company of her sponsor Seia. But Silence had a preference for the Fade, because it was there she had once seen the Elder One, and He had looked at her as though she was just like everyone else. For the first time since childhood, Silence’s heart had soared, and she’d known purpose again.

It had happened only the once, and Silence suspected it would be a time before it happened again. But each night when she fell asleep she held out hope that her God would grace her with His presence anew… but did not hope so hard that she was disappointed by the direction of someone else.

“In Ancient Tevinter, they were known as _somnoborium_ ,” a human female lectured the group. From the fabric of the Fade, she formed a metal sphere the size of her palm. It had thin striations on it that reminded Silence of a fingerprint. “The old elves used them to focus their magic.”

The amount of information they were given was lackluster- but this was not something Silence was unused to. Under the Qun, one was told only what they needed to know in order to carry out their duties- and she found the Venatori to be little different. Silence suspected that the Venatori wouldn’t share her amusement over the matter.

“Unfortunately they’ve been lost to the ages,” the woman continued, sounding bored with where she was going with this already, “But the Elder One is confident you’ll manage to locate at least one.”

Silence could hear the hollowness of the woman’s words. Jaw tight, Silence glanced at Seia to see how she felt about this.

Seia, evidently, felt fine.

Silence scowled, and pushed a calculated breath out her nose. Despite the obvious lack of confidence this woman had in the group, Silence began to feel a determination solidify inside her. Silence didn’t doubt that this was the Elder One’s wish, even if this was not the way He may have wanted to have it delivered, and if the Elder One wanted a somnoborium then Silence would find Him one. Silence would do anything to earn the right to look upon Him a second time. Silence would stop at nothing.

Someone asked: “What do we do if we find one?”

“You report back to me,” the woman answered.

Silence’s frown deepened. She found most everyone ill-worthy of her trust (though no one had ever tried earning it), her mind easily inventing ways that they would attempt to deceive her. Maybe this woman was lying even now, and this was not the desire of the Elder One- but her own instead. Going forward, Silence would need to exercise utmost caution.

“But who are you?” a different voice asked.

The group’s handler let out a long-suffering sigh, and told them her name was Lucerna. Silence had remembered that from their last meeting, during which Silence was fairly certain the exact same person had asked that exact same question.

The meeting concluded shortly thereafter, the other dreamers fading away one by one until the only Seia and Silence remained against the warped backdrop of the Fade.

Seia was everything Silence was not: young, rambunctious, educated. Beautiful, even in the dream’s green glow. And human. For the last five years, Seia had been Silence’s only companion and guardian, the only person who attempted to treat her like an individual. Silence repaid her with an unspoken jealousy, which she thought Seia vaguely aware of and extremely pleased by.

Seia was happiest when she had something that someone else did not, and there was no one else in Tevinter who could boast having a Qunari Saarebas for a pet. It was therefore easy to have more things than Silence, for she truly had nothing tangible- not even the clothes on her back belonged to her. They were Seia’s property.

In their time together, it either had not occurred to Seia to think on how this made Silence feel, or she simply didn’t think Silence capable of feeling anything about it at all. Even after five years with Seia, Silence couldn’t decide which it was. For as clever as she could sometimes be, Seia was also vacuous, air-headed.

It made trusting Seia difficult. But despite not trusting her, Silence did love Seia… in the way mother cats sometimes loved abandoned cubs of much larger felines. Silence often caught herself just watching the young woman, making sure that she remained in one piece, that she came home unscathed after her late-night outings.

Seia turned to Silence and beamed, her eyes alight with mischief. Silence took in the sight of her straight teeth and smiled back, but was careful to keep her own teeth covered: in the years Silence had spent with her mouth sewn shut, her teeth had turned brown and begun to rot. It shamed and embarrassed Silence.

Fortunately, Silence supposed, she rarely had cause to smile.

“We’re going to get one of those balls,” Seia insisted, every line of her face overflowing with contagious excitement. “We’ll show them all what you can really do!”

Seia said it as though Silence would finally fit in then. As though that was what Silence _wanted_ , what she _should_ want.

Silence had never fit in, not even on Par Vollen, not even before it had been discovered that she was a mage. Almost at the age of fifty, Silence was far from being foolish enough to believe that that would change now. Even if she received recognition from her God for her service, Silence would not become one with His other worshippers, would not magically be accepted by them.

Nothing was ever that easy.

However it was never Silence’s aim to dampen Seia’s spirits, so she gave an encouraging nod to the young woman.

It did the trick. Seia detailed out to Silence her ideas on where to look for a somnoborium, sculpting maps and shapes and toys from the wispy fabric of the dream while she rattled off her thoughts.

Silence listened, and Silence remained silent.


	5. Yarahel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever had a REALLY bad day?

_Ostwick, Free Marches_

“Hi, Yarahel! How are you today?” Zalsi asked from the other side of her sales stall.

Zalsi was so short, her voice so shrill, and her smile so genuine that Yarahel was always stricken by the urge to bend over and hug her. However he’d been forbidden from doing this some years ago because Zalsi claimed it made her look extremely unprofessional- and she wouldn’t tolerate being seen as such.

So instead of hugging her, Yarahel grinned and tried his best not to fidget (and failed).

“I’m good,” answered Yarahel, casting a glance at the dwarf’s wares before setting his bag on her table.

“Yeah?” chirruped Zalsi, her smile brightening a notch. Whether it was because Yarahel was doing well or because she was excited to see what he’d brought her Yarahel couldn’t tell, but he liked to think it was the former reason.

Yarahel nodded, and asked: “How’ve you been?”

“Excellent. I made double this month what I did the last.”

Although Yarahel could not understand being motivated by the possession of lots of money, he did understand that having lots of money made Zalsi happy, and because he wanted her to be happy he said: “I’m glad for you.”

“Thank you! How’s the clan?”

“We’ve been better,” Yarahel admitted with a brief frown.

In truth the clan was struggling. No children had been born for some time, and in order to preserve necessary skills there were many of their number taking on twice the amount of work. Work ethic could only get the clan so far, though, and for as much as none of them had liked the idea of going to humans for help (save Yarahel), it had eventually been their only choice as there were so few friendly clans in the area. It was the sole reason why Yarahel had been permitted to trade in a human city.

But Zalsi did not know this. At least, Yarahel had never told her. Though he did not possess his clanmates’ inherent fear and mistrust for all things different, he did believe that there were some things that should remain within the clan. Well-intentioned Zalsi seemed to be, but a slip of the tongue in earshot of the wrong sort of person, and Yarahel’s clan could be wiped from the face of Thedas all too easily.

Yarahel paused to peer up at the dwarfess through his eyelashes, and then opened the clasp on his bag. Yarahel unloaded this week’s haul: leathers, herbs, a few precious gems. Because she looked like she desired an explanation as to how the clan had been doing better, Yarahel said:  “There’s a cold going around.”

“Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that,” Zalsi said, and her tone of voice made it impossible to not believe her. “I have something for that, if you might be interested-”

Yarahel smiled without thinking about it, nodded and shrugged his shoulders as he unpacked the final parcel. “We’ll see. The Keeper is suspicious of any medicine from outside the clan. You know how it is...”

“Oh,” Zalsi said again, her expression becoming serious. The little woman nodded sagely. “Yes.”

Yarahel closed the clasp on his bag, and Zalsi took that as a sign to begin her appraisal. She withdrew a well-polished monocle from a hidden drawer and covered an eye with it as she always did, and went through each offering.

While she did this, Yarahel took a closer look at what she had on offer. He visited Zalsi once a month (or thereabouts), and so each visit contained something new for him to marvel over.

This time, she had a number of objects made of glass whose purpose Yarahel could not divine. Yarahel saw that Zalsi was busy turning the gems he’d brought this way and that so that they’d catch the light, and decided to not bother her by asking. There were likewise a handful of other things that appeared to be purely decorative, all made of metal. A black bar with hooks hanging off them, something that looked kind of like a dick with a flower around the head, an artsy sun. Yarahel thought they looked well-made, but found them otherwise uninteresting.

Until he saw _it_. A metal sphere, with tiny grooves like rivers in its surface. It sat in shadow, and yet was somehow brilliant with light. It did not move, and yet felt alive. It had no mouth, but it spoke. Yarahel could only liken the feeling to being out in the woods to hunt… and then getting the sensation that something unseen was out there hunting _him_. In those moments, Yarahel acted on instinct, either retreating to the safety of the clan or finding some form of cover without making a conscious effort to do either. It simply… happened.

 “I thought you might like that,” Zalsi said.

Yarahel snapped his hand back with a ragged exhale, and realized then that he’d removed one of his gloves and had almost touched the orb. Though he’d clenched his bare hand into a fist, Yarahel could still feel a cold on his palm that must have been radiating off the orb. Eyebrows pulling together, Yarahel frowned at his hands and tried to recall when he’d taken off his glove. Couldn’t remember doing it. His cheeks tingled with heat and embarrassment. Pressing his lips together, Yarahel cleared his throat and redirected his attention to Zalsi. Because he didn’t know what else to do (or what he might have done in the time he couldn’t remember), Yarahel opted to just smile. 

Zalsi elaborated: “It looks kind of elfy, doesn’t it?”

She’d said more or less this very thing to him the first time they’d met: ‘You look kind of elfy!’ Since Yarahel was in fact a Dalish elf, he wasn’t certain of what that was supposed to mean. A few times since then Zalsi had used the same phrase, but each subsequent use had not helped at all in Yarahel’s understanding of what it meant. But Zalsi always sounded very pleased when she said these things, and never seemed to mean it in the derogatory way Yarahel had heard from other people, and so he always reacted the same way when this happened.

Drawing in a deep breath, Yarahel said: “Yeah. It does.”

It didn’t, not to his eyes. And yet ‘elfy’ felt like an apt description for the item anyway.

“I got it at an estate sale last week. Someone had been using it to decorate their banister, but because there wasn’t another one to match it I was able to buy it for very cheap,” explained Zalsi. The way she watched him told Yarahel that she didn’t want him touching the thing, and so he didn’t.

Yarahel wasn’t so certain he wanted to anymore, anyway.

Zalsi removed her monocle, and as she put it away she watched Yarahel replace his glove.

“What are you asking for it?” Yarahel asked, staring at his fingers as they filled the cracked leather.

“If you’re buying the usual, I’ll toss it in for twenty-five coppers,” Zalsi said magnanimously. “Friend’s price.”

Yarahel took that bargain.

After they’d worked out the exchange, Yarahel began to pack away his purchase. He put the blankets away first, then the other rolls of fabric, then the salt. He’d also bought a wind instrument in miniature that made a nasally high-pitched sound when he blew on it, and a pair of fine boots. These were shoved into whatever spare space there was.

Until the orb was the only thing left.

Not trusting it to keep safe in the bag, Yarahel opted to carry the orb in hand back to the stables, where he had several other empty bags he could safely transport it in. It was just a banister (whatever that was) decoration, worthless because it had no sibling. No one would try to take it from him on his way out of the city.

On his way back to the stables, Yarahel’s attention was drawn to the one person in Ostwick stranger than himself: a woman with snow-white hair, faintly purple skin, and a pair of twisting horns. Her mouth was set in such a firm line that Yarahel worried over how unhappy she must be. Automatically upon registering this, Yarahel smiled at her.

Her yellow eyes zeroed in on his. Flicked over him. They passed each other in the next instant. Having never seen a whatever-she-was before, Yarahel stopped to look over his shoulder at her retreating form. Eventually someone moved in front of her, putting her out of sight.

Yarahel made it back to his clan late at night. The guard did not greet him with a hello, and went straight to wake the Keeper. Yarahel dismounted from his elk and pet her shoulders and face while he waited for the Keeper to turn up, smothered her snout in kisses. The doe huffed affectionately at him and pressed her nose into his hands.

“You’re late,” Keeper Irlassan said from the other side of the animal.

Yarahel rose up to the tips of his toes to peer at her.

This was the way things usually went when Yarahel came back home: he was chastised for being too slow, while also being the only one of them who was willing to leave so the clan could get what it needed.

There was no arguing with Keeper Irlassan, but Yarahel had never been prone to that sort of behavior anyway. So he said what he always said, which was: “Sorry.”

“Did you get what I told you to?” asked Keeper Irlassan, opening the saddlebag nearest her to inspect the contents. She asked the question every time, even though Yarahel only ever purchased what Keeper Irlassan asked for.

“Yes,” said Yarahel.

Keeper Irlassan made a doubtful noise, and then hauled the saddlebag off. It slipped from her hands and landed with a _thwump_ on the ground. The elk huffed and took a step back.

“I’ll see that everything is passed out in the morning,” the Keeper said, stooping to pick up the dropped bag.

“Okay,” Yarahel said.

Yarahel waited for Keeper Irlassan to leave before she smooched his elk one more time on the nose. “Are you staying here for the night?” he asked her.

She stamped one of her back feet, and turned to go.

There were some in the clan that thought it irresponsible of him to not keep his elk with the rest of the clan’s animals, and perhaps they were right. But she was also his only friend, and Yarahel could not bear the thought of forcing her to be somewhere she didn’t want to be. So long as it was up to him, she would be able to come and go as she pleased.

Once she was out of sight, Yarahel pulled his coat tighter about himself and wove his way through the camped aravels to find his family’s. Long ago, Yarahel had made a secret compartment in their aravel to hide miscellaneous and pointless treasures. It had been quite some time since Yarahel had had cause to use it, but before falling asleep that night he placed both the orb and wind instrument inside.

In the morning over breakfast of eggs and curried root vegetables, Yarahel said to his mother and father: “I saw a purple person yesterday.”

Both his parents wrinkled their noses at this, and said nothing.

“She had horns,” Yarahel continued, wanting to talk about this with someone. He’d never seen a horned person in his life before, and didn’t know what word to call this person. She’d been roughly human and elf-shaped, but definitely hadn’t been either.

“She sounds like a demon,” his father said, which was not an atypical response from him when he was confronted with the new and unknown.

But whatever his mother thought, Yarahel didn’t get to know. She simply ate her breakfast in silence, staring at her plate and avoiding looking at anyone.

After breakfast, Keeper Irlassan passed out the supplies Yarahel had obtained for them the day before. Yarahel’s family received only a portion of salt. At the same gathering, the clan discussed the tasks that needed doing for the day. Yarahel was given the job of hunting, and then helping tend to the sick if he returned before it was too late.

He prepared his hunting tools alone, and then went out to hunt. Alone.

Alone was Yarahel’s least favorite thing to be, but it was also how he spent most of his time. He wasn’t ignorant to the way others treated him and how they didn’t like him much, and being alone was the only time he could escape out from under that oppressive blanket of expectation and disappointment. When he had the chance, Yarahel spent long stretches of time by himself, until either a sense of duty or crippling loneliness brought him back to his clan.

Yarahel began to toe that line as dusk approached. With four dead pheasants tied to his belt, he supposed this wouldn’t be enough to make the Keeper happy… but was enough to keep Yarahel free of being accused of having wasted time in order to get out of caring for the sick (which is what he had done). 

By now, their care had likely fallen to another individual. Most of the sick people were the elders, and while Yarahel had no hate in his heart for anyone he certainly wasn’t a fan of the elderly. They were the most close-minded people in all the clan, and whatever disapproval he got from his parents and his peers was magnified tenfold by the elders. It was too much for Yarahel to deal with, and once when he’d said as much Elder Devesa had told him that ‘the strongest trees learn to bend with the wind.’ Yarahel had nodded along with that and told her she was certainly right, but privately he thought that cruel advice to give to someone. People were people, and trees were trees. One could not be expected to behave like the other and still be true to what they were.

At least, he didn’t think so.

Thinking on this made Yarahel worried about not having wasted enough time. He walked in a circle while he evaluated the risks of the situation. His biggest concern was how easy it would be for him to get caught by another hunter returning to camp, or even someone who had decided to go a little extra ways in order to have some privacy while they relieved themselves. This would be bad for Yarahel, though the punishment wasn’t likely to be anything he hadn’t already endured.

But… Yarahel already felt guilty over the idea of going to even greater lengths to avoid taking care of a job that the clan desperately needed help with. He knew it had been unacceptable of him to avoid them in the first place, and he found that his conscience had made his choice for him before he even made a conscious decision: Yarahel’s feet carried him home.

And soon enough, the idea that he might get stuck dealing with the elders after all wasn’t so bad. On the wind he could smell cookfires, and as Yarahel drew closer to camp he could smell cooking meat. One of the other hunters must have had a successful outing, and wasted less time in getting back to camp.

Yarahel pushed forward with a new spring in his step, and as darkness descended upon the woods he wondered if the glow from their fires had always been so bright at night. He tried to remember, but before Yarahel could make up his mind the night began to grow hazy with smoke. Yarahel heard a sound he’d never heard before, and some distant part of him understood that it was the roar of a fire gone out of control.

Panic consumed him. Yarahel ran, ran towards the fire and through the smoke. His lungs burned. His eyes watered. He tasted ash on his tongue, and then his ears suddenly tuned back in to the world, and Yarahel heard himself shouting _no no no no,_  shouting _mom, oh mom_ , shouting for the Keeper. Shouting for anyone.

Yarahel received no answer.

The fire grew outwards towards him, hungry, spreading fast. The flames were taller than he could jump, and some distant sense of self-preservation stopped him from trying when he reached the conflagration at last. Wood popped, sending sparks dancing on the wind.

Yarahel’s body carried him away without his consent.

When he opened his eyes, it took Yarahel a moment to realize where he was. Everything was black, charred, ashes. But the positioning of these cold ruins was familiar to him, and he knew that he was home.

At once, tears came to his eyes. They were so dry the sudden moisture hurt. Yarahel was quick to wipe it away, and in the process felt the taught tracks left on his face by previously-shed tears.

The fire had gone out. Some time ago, it seemed. There was not a coal left glowing.

Yarahel tried to remember coming here. He tried to remember where he had been before he came here. But his memory was black and blank.

“What am I doing here?” Yarahel rasped to himself. He hadn't realized until then how badly his throat hurt, but the pain quickly faded from his mind. His pain was secondary to what his clan must have suffered in its final terrified moments. He should have been here. He should be dead along with them.

Yarahel pushed himself up off his knees. The dust of the dead clung to his palms.

Moving as though he had stepped into the lair of a cruel beast, Yarahel stepped through the destroyed camp. His senses on high alert, Yarahel looked for something without knowing what it was he was looking for.

Gradually, he became aware of the fact that none of their supplies seemed to have been stolen. It was hard to tell for certain, but none of their chests had been opened. Their coin had melted into one solid lump. Though a few looked to have escaped, even the charred corpses of the clan’s halla remained.

Capturing the clan and enslaving them had likewise not been the goal. Yarahel could account for their numbers, though none of the bodies were really identifiable. The heat of the great fire had melted their faces off.

Periodically, Yarahel’s body tried to cry. But he had become hollow inside, and produced neither tear nor sound.

When Yarahel made it to the wreck that was his family’s aravel, he was given to the impression of a wilted flower. There were no bodies within, and yet there was something still entirely obscene about it, something worse than seeing his parents dead would have been. It took Yarahel a minute to realize what it was: the secret hiding spot had burned away, fallen apart.

The orb was not there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr @[junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/). Sideblog for this fanfic is [ashiverofsharkswastaken](https://ashiverofsharkswastaken.tumblr.com/).


	6. Solas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things don't always go the way we planned.

_Haven, Ferelden_

As his theory had resulted in the closing of the Breach, and because he was the only mage left alive in Haven, Solas had been invited to the conference held in the Chantry the day following Maxwell Trevelyan’s demise. Aside from Solas, those attending were Seeker Pentaghast, Ser Ganon, and Ser Feardorcha. The topic was how they might close the remaining tears in the Veil without Maxwell and his Mark, a subject which they all had a vested interest in.

“There are mages in Redcliffe,” Solas suggested, “We might seek their aide.”

“The last thing we need is more _mages_ ,” snarled Ser Feardorcha, glaring hate at Solas.

Solas had come to learn that whatever he said, Ser Feardorcha would be quick to refute in any way he could. The Templar was, however, very bad at arguing in an intelligent manner.

Solas ignored him, expecting that Ser Ganon would deign to listen to Solas’s reasoning. He had thus far.

“Why mages?” Ser Ganon asked without looking at Solas. Ser Ganon rarely looked at the person he was talking to, which Solas had originally taken as a lack of manners until he understood that it was far better to have Ser Ganon’s attention elsewhere. Unlike Ser Feardorcha, this one was half-clever.

Solas smiled at the elder Templar.

“The Mark was magic; the tears in the Veil are magical anomalies,” Solas reminded the trio, standing tall and with his hands clasped behind his back, “I’ve not met every mage in existence, but I suspect that the power of the Mark rivaled even the greatest mages of our time. _If_ you were to gather enough skilled mages, their combined power could be enough to stitch the Veil back together.”

“A mage was responsible for what happened at the Conclave,” Seeker Pentaghast said.

Ser Feardorcha bristled, and shifted his angry stare to her. Seeker Pentaghast had no proof of what had caused the destruction of the Conclave and the loss of the Seeker’s precious Divine, and so Solas likewise found this assumption to be an irritating one. However, as Solas also had no evidence to the contrary that he could present Seeker Pentaghast with, he could not argue the matter with her.

Ser Ganon helpfully stepped in to do so instead, saying: “Maybe. We’ll never know if Maxwell was the one to blame.”

“He wouldn’t have done anything like that intentionally,” Ser Feardorcha said to Ser Ganon, his words a plea and warning in equal measure. Based on what he’d gathered through observation, Solas saw that Ser Ganon and Ser Feardorcha had a close and very personal relationship. Ser Feardorcha was in awe of Ser Ganon, and envy could be found in the way Ser Feardorcha tried and failed to emulate him.

“ _Many_ people have done terrible things with the best of intentions,” Seeker Pentaghast interjected sharply.

Solas looked towards the dark ceiling, and kept himself from sighing.

Siding with no one, Ser Ganon only nodded, and continued: “But if it goes wrong- as it already has- there is no knowing the consequences. The best we could hope for would be the mages dying as Maxwell did. A worst case scenario could be all of them succumbing to demons, or even an expansion of the tears.”

“It is unlikely they would be able to exacerbate the problem unless it was their intention to do so,” opined Solas.

“There are Templars we could recruit,” Seeker Pentaghast suggested, as though Solas had said nothing.

The idea of being around even more of the brutes was nigh unbearable for Solas. He did not fear the Templars, but their opinion that he should grated. Unable to help himself, Solas said: “Templars might be able to be used to the same end, but they would pose even greater problems.”

Three pairs of eyes settled on him, but Solas did not balk. Lifting a single brow, he looked between each of them before he continued: “To date, no Templar has been able to close a tear, and we’ve had plenty of time to experiment since Maxwell’s death. Nullifying a tear would require the same amount of energy the tear was putting out, which would necessitate an impressive amount of lyrium-”

Both men twitched at the word, something shifting across their faces that suggested lyrium was a subject that should not be spoken of again.

For once, Solas opted to heed them. He was not the wisest of men, and he did not fear the Templars… but he did know better than to get between an addict and his drug.

“We could learn how to close the tears,” Ser Feardorcha said to Seeker Pentaghast, sounding desperate, wounded.

“Maybe,” Ser Ganon said again, rubbing his hand down his bristly mouth. “We are not mages.”

“But you have an understanding of magic,” countered Seeker Pentaghast, “And Templars are skilled in killing demons and do not have the same susceptibility to them that mages do. They would do a better job of protecting Haven.”

“Why must it be one or the other?” Solas interrupted.

“The Templars and the mages have been at war with each other,” Seeker Pentaghast explained to Solas, as though he was stupid. Ser Ganon had raised a skeptical brow, and Ser Feardorcha scoffed.

“I would expect present circumstances would have them putting aside their differences for the good of everyone,” replied Solas. “Certainly tears in the Veil are a bigger concern than-”

“No,” said Ser Feardorcha.

“You’d be surprised,” said Seeker Pentaghast.

Ser Ganon only shook his head, eyes meandering the dark room.

Solas did not feel any sort of loyalty to the mages in Redcliffe. He was not one of them: when he pulled on the strings of the Fade, it did not react to him as it would to them. Solas and those mages were entirely different entities. Yet it was the principle of the thing that made him argue, the dismay that three people in charge of so many could be so brazenly ignorant. They had to see sense.

“We don’t know that,” Solas said, “We’ve spoken to neither side. Everything has changed. I could go to Redcl-”

“No,” Seeker Pentaghast said sharply, cutting her hand through the air and stepping back from the table. “You are not leaving Haven.”

Solas felt the two Templars watching him very closely, felt as though he was surrounded by wolves. Solas forced an even breath out his nose, and smiled thinly at the three of them.

“Then I believe I’ve exhausted my usefulness in this meeting,” said Solas, because it was the only thing he could say that wouldn’t do irreparable damage to this fragile, fragile alliance.

It wasn’t Ser Feardorcha’s place to say so, but Solas sensed what the Templar left unspoken: _yes. Yes you have_.

Seeker Pentaghast demonstrated her authority by ignoring Solas, giving him no attention nor dismissing him from the meeting. Solas had to stand and listen to the three of them decide to try and recruit the rebel Templars to their side, had to watch the soft exchange between Ser Ganon and Ser Feardorcha as they worked out amongst themselves which one of them would go to Orlais, because, in twin displays of gallantry, both Ser Feardorcha and Ser Ganon volunteered themselves for the task. In the end it was decided that Ser Ganon would go, on the grounds that he was older and therefore had more experience, and that he spoke Orlesian. Ser Feardorcha, meanwhile, was more than capable of filling Ser Ganon’s role in Haven until he returned.

Ser Feardorcha preened under Ser Ganon’s confidence in him, oblivious to the look of doubt on Seeker Pentaghast’s face. She and Ser Feardorcha had not butt heads nearly as many times as she and Solas, however just beneath the surface of the young Templar Solas could sense his unrest. Things between Ser Feardorcha and Seeker Pentaghast would quickly sour without Ser Ganon’s intervention, and it was everyone but the two Templars who seemed to realize it.

Solas surmised that Seeker Pentaghast did not make a point of bringing this up because she was confident in her ability to bring Ser Feardorcha to heel, if the need arose. But she had so many other responsibilities weighing on her shoulders alone that Solas could not claim to have the same confidence in her. One could only be pulled in so many directions before they snapped, after all. After what had happened the day before, Seeker Pentaghast should have known that better than anyone… anyone except Maxwell, that was.

The meeting concluded with Ser Ganon deciding he would depart for Orlais before the day was done. He was the first to leave, followed by Seeker Pentaghast. Solas followed them, and felt Ser Feardorcha’s gaze burning into the back of his skull.

Out in the main hall of the Chantry, Seeker Pentaghast went one way while Ser Ganon went the other. Solas set course for the main doors, each step punctuated by the _thunk_ of Ser Feardorcha’s boots too close behind him.

Solas knew this was meant to make him feel uncomfortable, like a wolf was finally closing in. He kept his face straight and his shoulders squared to show the Templar that he was unimpressed by this behavior, and didn’t hold the door open for Ser Feardorcha when he reached it.

Outside, Solas took what felt like his first breath in ages. The air in the mountains was frigid, and stung. The sting in his lungs and the sight of the open, empty sky made Solas feel alive again, refreshed after having been locked away for over an hour with Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest. Solas paused several feet in front of the door to take it all in, shutting his eyes and smelling pine and fire.

Ser Feardorcha stormed out of the building after Solas, veered around him and away so quickly that Solas felt the Templar’s passing in the buffet of air on his cheek.

“I know that look,” a familiar voice said.

Solas opened his eyes and looked down on Varric Tethras, a dwarf whose acquaintance Solas had made the day before during the struggle up to the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Varric quickly found a nickname for everybody, and preferred sarcasm and humor as a means to cope with all of the modern doom and gloom. As he did not appear to have an issue with Solas’s being an apostate mage and was capable of some imagination (evidenced by his authorship of a number of novels), Solas found him tolerable.

Solas’s smile touched his eyes, barely.

“What look is that?” Solas asked Varric, lifting one brow.

“That’s the look of someone who’s not getting invited to any more parties,” Varric replied knowingly, and lifted his drink to Solas. “Welcome to the club.”

Varric had seated himself around a small fire ringed in stones, those stones ringed in damp logs. Nearby, Bianca the crossbow rest atop the log Varric sat upon. Pursing his lips, Solas opted to sit on the same log as Varric- but left nearly a foot between he and Varric.

“I would rather be here than there,” Solas said, laying his staff over his lap and leaning forward over it, elbows on his knees. Sighing, he dug slim fingers into his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“You should have tried traveling here with them from _Kirkwall_ ,” Varric laughed. Solas heard the dwarf shift.

Solas nodded, made an agreeing sound in the back of his throat. Colorful spots danced in front of his eyes. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

“It was great! Cassandra made threats, Kid Gorgeous tripped over me about ten times, and Ser Ganon spent three days working up the nerve to ask me for an autograph.”

Solas snorted, an authentic grin curling his lips. Lifting both eyebrows high, he looked at Varric to judge the veracity of this last statement.

Varric winked at Solas, tipped his chin. “It was the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Solas’s smile waned, and he looked away from Varric, off towards the mountains. A pregnant silence stretched between them. Both men understood that it was important not to break it, and neither did. As the quiet grew, Solas felt a sort of kinship forming with Varric- and yet it only left him feeling all the more distant, unreachable, alone. Where it mattered, Solas knew that he and Varric had nothing in common with one another. They were both simply outcasts, weavers of fates, crammed into lonely holds lacking power and authority… and in the end, that didn’t matter.

The fire waned as the sun descended behind the mountains. With only the wave of an index and middle finger, Solas stoked that fire. He stood, and, watching the flames, said: “Thank you for your company, Varric.”

“Any time, Chuckles.”

Solas left Varric by his fire. Though his empty stomach protested for food, Solas went straight to bed without eating. Every muscle felt at once exhausted, strained, as though he’d been covered in weights and tossed into a lake. There would be no respite from this in food; only dreams.

Since Maxwell’s death, the structure of the Fade here changed, stabilized. Just as many spirits vyied for his attention, countless stories eager to be told. But Solas had control of their power over him now, wouldn't be tossed from imprint to imprint as though he was nothing more than a leaf in an roiling sea.

A spirit found him and said: “I lost my boy, once.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Solas said.

The spirit was vaguely human in shape, had a head but no face. She glowed, the pink of new spring blossoms. The glow brightened as she received Solas’s condolences, but even so Solas could see right through her.

“It’s not your fault,” the spirit said. Feeling that Solas felt her pain, she was placated. “You’ve lost someone too.”

“Yes,” agreed Solas softly. He’d lost many. Without his needing to say so, the spirit understood this.

“I can help you find them,” she said. The spirit had a voice to soothe bee stings, but what injured Solas was far greater than that.

“What is your name?” Solas asked her, and she seemed to understand.

“I am Compassion,” Compassion said.

Solas smiled for her, a sad and loving smile.

“Those I’ve lost are out of your reach,” Solas told her.

Compassion shook her head.

“All but one,” she said.

Struck with this information as though by a fist, Solas required a moment to recover. Frowning, he shook his head- opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it.

“It’s Her,” Compassion confirmed for Solas what he dared not ask, and something in him took flight in joy or dropped through the earth in dread- or both, he wasn’t certain.

Except of one thing.

“Then we cannot find Her,” said Solas, his smile pained and adoring. “She would not allow it.”

At least not yet. Solas had not suffered enough. He’d endured only ignorance and idiocy, agonizing to him now only because it’d been so long since Solas had had to endure any real kind of pain other than his own self-loathing.

“I know where She is. I know where everyone is. Everyone who’s been lost,” Compassion said, not comprehending,  and Solas wanted to devour this spirit just so that he could be as close to Her as Compassion was, which was only by the barest inches.

Solas shook his head again. Swallowed his hunger down, and sought out his deepest wells of patience. He would need to be patient, if he ever wanted to see Her again. And he did, Solas did. Every fiber of his being ached for Her absence, and now that he knew She was here, on this plane of existence where he could reach Her, Solas became rabid- mad- with his need for Her.

“You may know where She is,” Solas told Compassion as gently as he could, “But finding Her physical location would not give me what I need. She and I are a different kind of lost.”

“I see,” Compassion said, her bodily brightening with the absorption of this perspective. Compassion turned to her surroundings, reflecting still Haven overflowing with thin, dim shades of people who needed her less than Solas did.

“They will hurt you, if they find out about you,” Solas warned her. “The tears in the Veil- if you come through, you will be corrupted into a demon. They don’t know any better. They don’t want to.”

“I know,” Compassion said simply. Though she had no eyes, Solas could feel her looking at him anyway.

“I don’t want that to happen to you,” said Solas.

Compassion’s shape glowed with warmth, and she told him as a mother would break sad news to her child: “Everything isn’t always about you, Solas.”

“I know it isn’t,” he said, though Solas doubted himself at once. He’d been told this before, thousands of years ago even. That he was selfish. Solas had not believed it then, but in hindsight came to understand that he’d been wrong. But how could he be now? Solas was warning Compassion because she was in danger. “I just want you to be safe.”

“Then let me make my own decisions,” Compassion said, no chastisement in her tone- though Solas feels chastised anyway. “Trust that I know how to keep myself safe. There is no better way to show one’s respect.”

Solas bowed his head. “Yes, of course. My apologies. I should not have presumed to know more of your health than you do.”

“You should not have,” agreed Compassion, but did not sound offended.

Solas realized with surprise that this was a relief.

“I will not remain here,” Compassion went on to say. “I came because I sensed I was needed. But everyone here is beyond my help.”

The Templars, Solas knew she was speaking of.

“Are you needed elsewhere?” Solas asked.

“Everywhere,” Compassion answered.

Some unnameable thing about this response struck Solas as funny, but he could not laugh at it because she would not understand, and he did not wish to insult her any more than he already had with his concerns.

“Then I thank you for your time,” Solas said to her, and bowed. “It has been enlightening.”

“Not for the reasons you think. Be well, Dread Wolf,” Compassion said, and dissipated back into the fabric of the Fade.

When Solas woke from his dream in the morning, he was imbued with a new and volatile energy. He felt it hum through his bones, down to the very tips of his fingers, like a thunderstorm looming on the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr @[junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/). Sideblog for this fanfic is [ashiverofsharkswastaken](https://ashiverofsharkswastaken.tumblr.com/).


	7. Aul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victory without sacrifice is meaningless.

_Minrathous, Tevinter_

“Marcus is sick.”

Lucius’s bond with his eldest son was strong, and it was possible that Lucius even loved Marcus more than he did Aul. For a long time, Lucius had believed that Marcus would be his only child; he’d spoiled and bonded with him accordingly. As such, the fear Lucius had for his boy’s health was entirely genuine- anyone could see it plainly on his face, if they could not decipher it from Lucius’s restless pacing and his tendency to assault inanimate objects that looked at him funny, as Aul’s paperweight apparently had. It now lay broken on the other side of the room, a dent in Aul’s wall where it had shattered.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Aul said.

“He’s _really_ sick, he won’t stop vomiting-”

Lifting his chin and reaching for Lucius with both hands to stop him from pacing, and shushed him the way one might a startled horse- or a crying infant. Lucius stilled at the touch, eager to seek comfort in his lover, wanting someone to take this worry away from him.

Aul said: “Shh. I’ll have a look at him.”

“You will?” Lucius breathed, his eyes wide and wet with wonder and gratitude, like he’d forgotten that Aul had already promised this before their childrens’ playdates.

“I will,” Aul reiterated. “How’s Quinton doing?”

“Why?” asked Lucius, at once perplexed and annoyed for it.

“I will need to know what I’m getting into,” Aul said with a light lift of his eyebrows. “If Quinton is worse than expected, then-”

“Quinton’s fine,” Lucius answered with a dismissive wave of his hand, pushing away from Aul.

“He’s fine?”

Another impatient huff, another wave of his hand. “He’s not _fine_ ,” said Lucius, “He’s got the pox. But that’s all. It’s not. Out of control, or anything.”

But Lucius had never been exposed to a child with the pox, so how would he know? Aul had his doubts.

“Ah,” Aul said, “That’s well. Has Marcus stayed home?”

“Yes,” Lucius said, wringing his hands, once more dissolving into dismay. “He couldn’t possibly go out like this, he-”

Aul laid a hand on Lucius’s shoulder and hushed him again. “We’ll go to him now.”

“Now?”

Aul smiled, and nodded. “Now.”

“But you have work-” Lucius started to protest.

“I always have work,” Aul interrupted, and started to steer Lucius from his office by the elbow, “But if I do not act now, I may lose a member of my family.”

It was a farce; more than anything, Lucius loved to be the center of Aul’s attention. He loved it when he could distract Aul from his responsibilities, and that was all this really was below the surface whether Lucius knew it or not. But more than that, Lucius loved to hear that they were family, that their inappropriate relationship as commander and cadet had turned into one of legal incest.

It was confirmed by the way Lucius stopped protesting, the way he became calm and malleable in Aul’s hands. He’d let Aul lead him off a cliff, so long as Aul blew him a kiss first.

At Lucius’s estate, Lucius lead Aul to Marcus. Marcus was in his bed, pallid skin covered in a sheen of sickly sweat and a mass of red blisters. Beneath his many blankets, he shivered with such intensity that his teeth chattered. At the corner of one mouth, Aul spotted the faintest dribble of crusted orange vomit.

“Marcus,” Aul said, speaking as though to an injured bird. Aul went to his bedside, one dark hand seeking his eldest godson’s beneath the covers.

Marcus moaned miserably in response to his name, heavy, swollen eyelids creaking open- though his eyes never met Aul’s, only stared into nothing. When Aul squeezed his hand, Marcus’s responding squeeze was feeble, pathetic.

“You should have called on me sooner,” Aul scolded Lucius, his voice just above a whisper.

Lucius stood at his side, desperate, wanting. Aul could feel him refraining from putting his hands on Aul in ways that would not be appropriate for brothers-in-law, though his energy was anything but sexual. Lucius wanted to be comforted, and Aul had none to give.

The magister turned to his former commander, and warned him: “This is bad, Lucius.”

Lucius’s eyes widened in response to that, and began to swim with tears.

“I know,” Lucius said, sorrow clogging his throat. “Will you help him? Please?”

Aul said: “I’ll try. I can’t make any promises though. You waited too long.”

Lucius flinched at the words. It's the first time Aul had seen Lucius flinch, ever. Aul watched the reaction carefully.

“I’m sorry,” Lucius said, “I thought-”

Aul silenced him by placing a hand on his cheek. Aul had the hands of a warrior: thick fingers, rough calluses, blunt nails. But Lucius shut his eyes tight and pressed his cheek hard into that hand, as though he couldn't get enough of it.

“Go get me water, please,” Aul said.

Lucius left to obey. Aul watched him leave the room, and then turned his attention back to Marcus.

Marcus had closed his eyes again,  breathing shallow. Aul felt his pulse, and the boy’s body was so hot the skin contact almost burned.

Lucius really had waited too long. Aul had to wonder why, but knew better than to ask for a reason. More likely than not, it would be something nonsensical.

When Lucius returned with the water, Aul began his procedure. This involved bloodletting, and removing microscopic elements found within the blood. It was a messy and lengthy job, made even messier and lengthier by Marcus waking from his stupor to throw up- twice.  Before it was over, Aul had a message sent to his home that he would not be there for dinner. The responsibility of preparing the meal and caring for her siblings again fell to Junia.

When he had at last finished with Marcus, night had fallen over Minrathous. Both Angela and Lucius hovered nearby, clinging to one another the way married couples would be expected to, but in a way they never did.

“I've done all I can,” Aul said at last. “You need to keep liquids in him. Feed him a broth, at least.”

Marcus lay in the bed still, weak, unmoving. He has begun to stop responding to outside stimuli, but Aul had explained this undertaking would be just as exhausting for Marcus as it was for him. A deep rest would not be unexpected. Aul looked at him one final time.

“You aren't staying?” Angela asked.

“I have my own children to tend to,” Aul reminded Angela with a sharp glance. Unlike her household, his was not riddled with servants to take care of his offspring in his absence. “Much as I would like to stay with Marcus, I cannot. If you would like his condition monitored, I would contact Enchanter Flavius, though I have doubts that he will be able to do more for Marcus than I already have.”

“Thank you, Aul,” gushed Lucius, his belief in Aul unshakeable.

“We’ll be contacting Enchanter Flavius,” Angela assured him, less friendly. Angela was also very attached to Marcus, if course, and in a frightened mother’s eyes there was never enough that could be done for her child.

Aul smiled at Angela, dipping his head. “By all means. Do let me know how Marcus and Quinton are doing in the morning.”

“I will,” Lucius said, patting his wife's arm, which was hooked with his.

Angela said nothing, only watched Aul go.

It was long past the time his children were meant to be in bed, but when Aul arrived home he found Junia still awake. She sat at the kitchen table, crying as quietly as she could, clutching little Julius to her narrow breast.

Junia didn't notice Aul enter the room, though the doorway stood right in front of her.

“Junia,” Aul said slowly, moving slowly, smelling that something was not right in the air.

A wet gasp from Junia. She sat up a little straighter, eyes connecting with her father's. But she could only look at him for a second before her face crumpled with grief.

“Dad,” she said. The word broke around a tight bubble in her throat. Junia squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

“Junia,” said Aul again, and went to her.

“I’m sorry,” his girl wailed, “I’m so sorry daddy, I didn’t know what to do, I-”

Aul didn't need to ask what happened. It would be cruel to, now. Instead he laid a hand on Junia’s shoulder, and looked at the cold bundle in her arms. Julius’s face was pale, smattered with irritated blisters, and still. There was a fine crust around the rims of his nostrils, and puke dried at the corners of his mouth, smeared across his chin.

Junia’s shame ballooned when her father saw what had become of her littlest brother, and the determined restraint to keep from sobbing noisily broke at last. Her body shook as she struggled to breathe. Her cries echoed through the house.

“My daughter,” Aul said, jaw flexing, eyes swimming. He kneeled down by Junia’s side, and turned her face away from her dead brother. “Junia.”

“You said he’d be all right.” Junia choked the words out. It wasn’t an accusation, and yet there was still hate in those words, hate for having trusted them, hatred for her hate.

Tears rolled down Aul’s cheeks.

“Junia,” he said, trying to reach her through this film of sorrow, “Give him to me.”

But Junia could not. She clutched her brother to her chest and cried her bitter tears. Aul coaxed her to the floor, and held his daughter and son against his chest. Aul stroked Junia’s hair until she exhausted herself to sleep an hour later.

The following morning, none of Aul’s children went to school. He breakfasted with them all but Junia, who was asleep in her room, and told them of what had happened to Julius. All but Neela were too young to understand what death meant, even after they’d been presented with Julius’s cleaned, tiny corpse. Neela quickly grew impatient with this, and stormed out of the room Julius’s remains were being kept in until his funeral could be arranged, leaving Antony, Lola, and Donna behind and confused.

Busy with work and preparations, Aul enlisted the help of two of the house servants in caring for the children that day before making for the Circle.

Shortly after his arrival, a courier arrived at Aul’s office with a note. After dismissing the delivery boy, Aul opened the letter as he moved back to his desk. Stopped before he could sit down when he recognized the hand as Lucius’s. The letter was only two words: ‘Marcus died.’

Aul read the letter twice, without expression. He placed it on his desk, and as he pulled his stuffed leather chair away from his desk to sit in it he glanced at his cabinet of hate mail.

Aul produced a roll of parchment, measured off precisely an inch, and cut it. On this paper he wrote in a flowing hand with large loops: ‘We owe it to Tevinter to end this animosity. Together we can effect real change. Do not let hatred get in the way of progress.’

After the ink had dried, Aul spritzed the paper with his cologne; he’d brought a new vial of it with him to work that morning, recently concocted. It was a simple measure towards proving the authenticity of any document supposedly written by him, and other magisters and people of import employed the same technique. Supposedly, letters from the Black Divine smelled of plum. Aul had never been the recipient of a letter from the Black Divine, but one had passed through his hands among a circle of colleagues, each fascinated and honored as they basked in the glory of this trinket. Everyone had sworn then that they’d smelled the plum. But when Aul had sniffed the paper, paper was all it’d smelled like to him.

Later that day, the magisters met. Aul arrived early with the note he’d penned in his office, and offered it to the Magisterium’s most prolific author of ignorance and racism: Nero Commoda. The human was Aul’s height, also stocky like Aul, but made thick with fat rather than mean muscle. Nero snatched the paper from him with a haughty scoff, no audible words exchanged between them.

By the time the meeting commenced, some rumor had been spread about the death of Aul’s child. No one offered their condolences, however, which was not unusual given how these men and women could not bring themselves to even look at Aul… and because the news they’d received was far more interesting than a dead half-elf, admittedly.

“Our spies report that the Breach over the Temple of Sacred Ashes has been stopped. Subject Beta appears to have died in the process,” Speaker Peregrina informed them. Light glinted from her narrow spectacles as she read from a file. “Subject Alpha remains at large.”

It had been theorized by some that the cause of the so-called Breach in the Veil was a cryptid of sorts, one the Magisterium had dubbed Subject Alpha. Due to the nature of Subject Alpha’s powers, the Imperium of course had an interest in finding it and had been searching the area surrounding the Temple of Sacred Ashes since the explosion there.

At the mention of Subject Alpha, several of the magisters exchanged knowing glances with one another- Nero Commoda among them. Aul did not fail to notice this.

The Speaker continued droning, meanwhile.

“We have located Magister Alexius. He’s in Ferelden-” Speaker Peregrina was skilled in delivering news with pointed dispassion, but even she pronounced the name of the country with obvious distaste, “-in Redcliffe. According to our sources he’s allied himself with the southern mages, for reasons that remain unknown. Our diplomat in Queen Anora’s court tells us that the Queen is preparing to intervene. As Magister Alexius has disappeared from the Magisterium without notice and taken what can be seen as aggressive action against a nation we are at peace with, our first order of business is to determine if he is to retain his title as Magister. We will hold this to a vote.”

Aul voted nay. Nero and the men he had glanced at at the mention of Subject Alpha had all voted yea. Magister Alexius got to keep his title. Along with this concession, the Magisterium decided to send a warning to Alexius with the intrigue their diplomat had recovered from Queen Anora’s court. When it was suggested that Magister Alexius would need to heed this warning or lose his position in the Magisterium, it was shot down by the same people who voted for Alexius to keep his title.

A magister held great power everywhere but the Magisterium, Aul realized during the proceedings. Outside, the title could be flaunted in any manner the magister saw fit, and he or she would get what they wanted. But when they congregated together, their voices were only one of many. Those that affected change were the ones in cliques. Aul had not been invited into one.

It had long been said that there was safety in numbers. This wasn’t true, in Aul’s experience. Prey animals were safe in groups so long as at least one of their number was slow and weak and old- and of course it was seen to that one of them was. With social predators, it was even worse. Put one toe out of line and the consequences were death or exile, or things even worse than that.

From across the great chamber, Aul watched Nero Commoda over his folded hands, index fingers extended vertically over his lips. When the meeting concluded, Aul saw that Nero lagged behind to gather with his friends. Nero showed them a slim piece of paper, and together they laughed over what had been written upon it. After they’d had their fun, they left one by one until Nero alone remained.

Nero made eye contact with Aul. At first his expression was one of shocked disgust, as though he couldn’t believe an elf dare lay eyes on him at all. This was new to Nero since Aul had been his professor in the Circle: back then, Nero had resented Aul’s authority over him but also feared what acting out against it might mean for him.

After all, it took a special kind of elf to become a professor in a Tevinter Circle, to become a Knight Enchanter, to serve and survive in their army, to marry a human noble and have six children by her. If it were so easy, every elf would be doing it. If it were so easy, Aul wouldn’t have drawers of hate mail back in his office.

Even with all his friends to back him up, as a student Nero had been unwilling to test Aul- perhaps because he’d been smart enough to know there was nothing he could test Aul with, not at that age.

But Nero flashed Aul a smile from across the emptying room that said he’d thought the tables had turned. Here, Nero thought he had power over Aul.

Because he was human.

Because he was young.

Because he had friends.

Aul smiled, too.

Before the night ended, Aul made an appearance at Lucius’s home. Both Angela and Lucius were irritated with him for having not shown up earlier, but hadn’t the energy to chastise him for it. They stared with hollow eyes rimmed in red, and sat at the bedside of their dead son. Without a word, Aul joined them.

The room smelled of death, but more than that it smelled of bile and shit. Marcus’s death had not been dignified, though so few people were ever allowed that privilege.

After some time in heavy, reeking silence, Aul said: “Julius died last night.”

Angela looked sharply away from Marcus to watch Aul’s face, but Lucius was far gone, seeing and hearing and feeling things that Aul and Angela could not.

“I’m sorry, Aul,” Angela said, confused and stricken by the news. Eyebrows pinched together, she shook her head at him. “I should have- I’ve been-”

Aul held up a hand as a sign for Angela to stop. She was taken aback by that, too.

“I will need a sample of Marcus’s tissue,” Aul said.

Angela’s face blanched even further. On her other side, Lucius seemed to come to. “You what?”

“I don’t believe this was just _varicellae._  I think someone did this on purpose.”

“What? Aul, what are you talking about?”

Aul looked away from Marcus’s corpse, met and held Angela’s gaze. “The day Lucius gave me his seat in the Magisterium, I received a letter from Magister Commoda. In it, he swore that I would come to regret becoming a magister.” Aul’s attention slipped sideways, back to Marcus. “I believe this might be what he meant.”

“Aul, are we in danger?” Angela asked. But before Aul could answer, her eyes went wide and she stumbled out of her chair. “Oh Maker,” she said, and tore out of the room. Aul watched her go, assuming she was going to check on her only remaining child.

“I will test the letter for signs of contamination,” Aul said, speaking now to Lucius. Lucius didn’t appear to be listening, though that was hardly any different from usual. “But in order to prove anything, I’m going to need a sample of Marcus’s tissue.”

“Fine,” Lucius answered, the word moving through him like wind through an empty cave. “Take whatever you want, Aul.”

Aul squeezed Lucius’s shoulder, and allowed them a minute of silence.

Then Aul took that sample, and went home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr @[junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/). Sideblog for this fanfic is [ashiverofsharkswastaken](https://ashiverofsharkswastaken.tumblr.com/).


	8. Florianne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Florianne has a good idea. Or so she thinks.

_The Winter Palace, Orlais_

“Gaspard’s forces have-”

“He is yet the Grand Duke,” Celene interjected calmly from her place of honor at the cabinet’s table, “Let’s not disrespect my wayward cousin.”

Since the outbreak of the War of the Lions, Duke Montfort had not used Gaspard’s title. Every cabinet meeting, Celene corrected him on this. Florianne saw by the look in the Empress’s cold blue eyes that she would not continue to tolerate this show of disrespect for much longer, though her voice belaid no threat.

As usual, Duke Montfort hadn’t noticed the peril he put himself in. Florianne watched a muscle flex in his jaw, and then Duke Montfort tried again: “By my reports, the Grand Duke’s forces are drawing nearer to Lake Celestine. If he manages to seize control of the lake, he will cripple our ability to feed our people and will be able to control the trade coming out of that region. We must send warships to the area.”

At every cabinet meeting, Duke Montfort also told the Empress where she needed to station her troops. Most of the time, his demands were overzealous and therefore taken with a large grain of salt.

“There’s no need to send warships to Lake Celestine,” the witch Morrigan opined, with her usual air of superiority.

Although Morrigan was undeniably fascinating, Florianne did not like her. The other woman was mysterious, and a strange combination of naive, untrustworthy, and untrusting. As well, Morrigan was exceedingly intelligent in all manners for someone who came from the ass-end of nowhere. Morrigan held sway over Celene in a way that seemed to be out of pure companionship rather than manipulation, and that made her all the more dangerous- an obstacle for Florianne to overcome if she was to ever reach her end game.

“If the Grand Duke is to take the lake, our warships stationed outside of Val Royeaux will be able to intercept any trade he tries to send out to sea. I say let him waste his manpower on conquering a body of water- it costs us nothing,” said Morrigan.

“Morrigan is right,” agreed the Empress, fixing her steely gaze on the duke. “Putting up a fight would put our constituents in needless danger as well. Leaving the Grand Duke be for now avoids bloodshed." 

Duke Montfort frowned, but said nothing more. He knew when he was beat.

In the lull that followed, Florianne said: “I’ve received a letter from an old friend just outside of Verchiel who claims that there is strange activity going on in the area.”

“Orlais is in the middle of a civil war, and demons are pouring out of holes in the sky. To which oddity is she referring?” questioned Morrigan, sounding as though it was stupid for anyone to be complaining of either thing by now. Neither were new developments.

Florianne frowned uncertainly, and withdrew the neatly-folded letter from her clasp. It carried the scent of lavender, wafting out into the room as Florianne flattened the parchment on the round table. She took a moment to find the line, tracing the words with a slim index finger. While Florianne did this, the atmosphere of the room grew impatient.

“Neither,” Florianne said at last, lifting her chin. Her eyes flickered over the various cabinet members, but quickly ducked again- unable to hold their gaze. “Here: ‘Chevalier Jean-Luc heard them speaking in a foreign tongue, and commented that their dress was unlike any he had ever seen. They carried mages’ staves and walked the path towards a collapsed elvhen ruin.’”

“Who sent this letter?” Empress Celene asked sharply.

Beneath her imperious stare, Florianne shrank. Swallowing hard, Florianne replied with only a quick look in the Empress’s direction: “The Comtesse Laurent.”

Without a word, the Empress extended a perfectly-manicured hand towards Florianne. Florianne passed her the letter, and watched as the Empress read it over.

“Has the Grand Duke made an alliance with a foreign country?” asked the Empress in disbelief, and although no one in the room could answer that question it seemed as though she expected someone to answer her.

No one did, though logic dictated an outside alliance as an unlikely thing. The Grand Duke favored war, and it was difficult to make war with other governing bodies if there was a peace between them. It was why the Grand Duke had been forced to focus his violence inward, on Orlais itself.

Clearing her throat, Florianne tried to speak again: “Che, Chevalier Jean-Luc is one of the Grand Duke’s men. If the Grand Duke was receiving foreign aid, I do not… think that he would have thought it strange to see foreigners on our soil, and so would have said nothing to the comtesse.”

At the Empress’s side, Morrigan narrowed her eyes. Florianne shrank beneath her scrutinizing glare as well.

“Possibly,” the Empress said slowly.

“Where were these foreigners from?” Morrigan wanted to know, addressing Florianne, who only raised her shoulders in reply.

“The letter does not say,” said the Empress. “However Chevaliers are educated in multiple languages. If it were a language Chevalier Jean-Luc recognized, I imagine that would have been included in this commentary.”

A few others at the table made thoughtful noises. Florianne only raised her shoulders again.

“The letter did say that they looked to be mages,” mused another cabinet member, Lady Seryl. “I assume these mages appeared atypical to him.”

“How do you mean?” asked Florianne, frowning.

“Well,” said Lady Seryl, adopting a patient tone of voice that suggested Florianne was a dumb child, “We’ve all seen Circle mages. If the mages Chevalier Jean-Luc spotted looked like Circle mages, he would have said as much, wouldn’t he have?”

“We don’t know what he would have done,” Morrigan said. “We don’t know this Chevalier.”

“We can’t send a group to investigate this claim,” the Empress added, “The Grand Duke would never allow it.”

“Surely a scout could remain undetected,” the Duke Montfort said.

Morrigan lowered her chin and the Empress turned her head away from the witch, and in that tiny fraction of a second their eyes met in a secret deliberation, and Florianne knew she had won. This was not the first time Florianne had seen the two women look at one another that way, and she’d seen firsthand the sort of secret agreements that passed between them with only a glance in the past. It was dangerous to form habits when playing the Game, yet also inevitable for someone like Empress Celene, who had been playing it her whole life. Morrigan appeared to have also been playing at something similar, though with far less instruction.

“Perhaps,” conceded the Empress. And even though her mind had been made up, continued: “I will have to consider the matter carefully.”

The duke made a thoughtful noise, while Lady Seryl nodded her approval. Florianne smiled her hapless smile, and was ignored for the rest of the cabinet meeting. When it ended, Florianne floated around the room listlessly as she usually did, hoping that someone might want to exchange a word or two. Although her need for attention was being sated quite thoroughly by Caelus, it was important to act as though that was not the case. A sudden change in her behavior would arouse suspicion, and draw the wrong sort of attention.

And to Florianne’s genuine surprise, she was pulled aside by none other than Lady Seryl. The younger woman had a bright and personable smile, and Florianne had once mistaken her for being kind. Florianne made the muscles in her arms and hands relax as she and Lady Seryl kissed one another on the cheek.

“Grand Duchess Florianne!” Lady Seryl said, her smile immediately morphing into something more mischievous, “I hear you have a new gentleman caller. Is it true?”

Florianne felt as though she’d been slapped. She forced her open mouth closed, and blinked away her shock. A blush warmed Florianne’s cheeks.

“Oh, y-yes,” Florianne said, smiling. “It is.”

“Much younger than you, isn’t he?” Lady Seryl asked.

By Florianne’s estimation, there was something like forty years between her and Caelus. While this wasn’t strange in Orlesian high society, Lady Seryl’s tone would have made any respectable woman bristle- but Florianne was not respected by anyone, and so she feigned being flattered.

“Yes,” said Florianne, unease creeping in her gut. She didn’t like the fact that someone had found out about Caelus already, but there was no harm in confirming what was already known. Admitting to it was the surest way to dissipate any interest in the affair. “He’s a young one.”

“Is there anything there?” Lady Seryl asked with what was supposed to be concern.

Florianne laughed, and it wasn’t hard to make it sound authentic- because it was.

“Why no,” Florianne said with a coy shake of her head, “Nothing at all.”

Later, Florianne rode in her carriage with Caelus at her side. It was the safest way for them to scheme, as Florianne had regularly taken carriage rides even before he turned up- so no one would think the behavior out of the ordinary, and the only person there who could possibly eavesdrop on them was the driver. Though Florianne would not have pegged the driver as loyal, common sense and survival instinct would keep his mouth shut. After all, if any of the secrets exchanged in the carriage got out, there were only two people other than Florianne in all of Thedas who could have slipped up and revealed them; and she knew where to find them both.

“They’ve fallen for it. I’m confident the Empress will be dispatching the witch to investigate by tomorrow’s end,” Florianne relayed to Caelus.

“Good,” Caelus answered, staring out the carriage window. In one hand he held Florianne’s, the other idly stroking the back of it. “Our agents will be warned and kept on the lookout for her. When she arrives, she’ll be disposed of.”

Florianne frowned. “What?”

A sudden and wicked grin overcame Caelus, who redirected his attention to Florianne with a shake of his head. “She can’t be allowed to live.”

There was something absurd about the way that statement was punctuated by the thud of horse hooves on packed dirt. Raising her eyebrows, it was Florianne’s turn to look out the window. Fields rolled by beneath a setting sun.

Florianne wasn’t about to argue a case for Morrigan’s life. Magic was as unnerving as it was fascinating, but Morrigan had never been forthcoming with her skills to anyone but the Empress and wielded her powers like a threat. Yet still, there was something alarming about this.

“You should have told me,” Florianne said, “That that was the plan.”

“I thought it was obvious,” Caelus replied in a way that told Florianne he didn’t really care if it had or hadn’t been obvious at all.

“It wasn’t,” said Florianne, settling her stare back on Caelus.

Caelus was unmoved. He shrugged, unapologetic. “In future I shall be more articulate in the exact parameters of our movements.”

Florianne withdrew her hand from Caelus’s grasp, and set her clasped hands in her lap.

“Morrigan will not be easy to defeat,” Florianne said. “The Empress wouldn’t accept just any mage into her court. Morrigan has proved herself to be the best of the best.”

“The Elder One plans on seeing to her personally,” Caelus said, disinterest in his tone. He eyed Florianne’s hands, and then gazed out the window once more. “To Him she is little more than an infant, no matter her skill.”

Talk of the Elder One between the two of them had been sparse. Thus far, Florianne had been unable to tell if it was because even Caelus knew little about him, or if tidbits of information were being fed to her when her interest needed to be recaptured. Hearing the name made Florianne’s breath hitch in her chest, a strange combination of excitement and fear pricking at her.

“Why should He see to her personally?” asked Florianne, voice low. She admired the sunset against Caelus’s profile, how it pooled at the crook of his nose.

“She must have something only he can obtain from her,” answered Caelus with another shrug. “He did have many questions about the outbreak of the War of the Lions, and the erratic movements of the various aggressors.”

“He did,” Florianne agreed. Caelus had taken down a report from Florianne on what had happened; she did not know much, but it was surprising what she could gather simply by being in the right place at the right time. People were not so careful in what they divulged when you weren’t considered a threat.

“So it likely has to do with the witch’s involvement in that,” Caelus supplied with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders.

“But why would he kill her for it?” Florianne wondered. It was clear that Caelus knew no more than that, on this matter at least, when he only shrugged. Florianne let it be. She said instead: “Lady Seryl of the cabinet’s found out about you.”

Caelus only arched a brow. “I very publicly and very pointedly wooed you at your party.”

“Yes,” agreed Florianne, irritation coloring her cheeks. “But her discovery of our dalliances means we will have to be more cautious. This cannot appear to be anything more than a lighthearted fling. Or if it does appear more than that, it must look like it’s happening authentically.”

“It is very technically little more than a lighthearted fling,” Caelus pointed out.

“There are no technicalities in the Game,” Florianne said, exerting great effort to keep herself from snarling at Caelus.

Caelus had the nerve to roll his eyes at Florianne; although she was little-liked and ill-respected, no one dared to do that to Florianne where she could see. Florianne recoiled as though she’d been smacked in the face, but before she could react properly Caelus continued: “We’re clever people. With your guidance, I’m sure we’ll manage to navigate the intricacies of how we present our relationship successfully.”

Florianne found that her anger fizzled away at the sight of his smile, her brain struggling to process his words. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, but Caelus spoke again before Florianne had the chance to: “The acquisition of Haven is not going well.”

Although the collective was small and was unlikely to bring any harm to the Elder One and his doings, it was never a good idea to let opposing forces amass. The Venatori wanted to obtain the land Haven was on, if only to keep a closer eye on the activity there.

“We didn’t talk about it at the cabinet meeting,” Florianne said. It had been brought up twice before, a brief debate sparked over what should be done about the tiny settlement. Orlais could lay claim to it, but doing so might have upset relations with Ferelden, which Celene was never keen on doing. Haven had been mentioned indirectly a third time, in a letter claiming there was red lyrium at the remains of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Not knowing what to do with that information, the discussion of Haven had ended there so far as Florianne was aware, and nothing had been decided. So the Venatori had tried to take matters into their own hands, sending a proxy to Haven a week ago to try and argue over ownership.

“I expected as much,” said Caelus. Florianne could taste his disappointment.

“Perhaps we will be able to find another way to gain a handhold in the area?” Florianne said.

Caelus scowled at her optimism. “It’s not like we can send one of our own there.”

Haven was crawling with Templars, and they would certainly notice if a Tevinter mage tried to enter their number.

“Even if we could,” continued Caelus sharply, “They would have little intelligence to offer us. I doubt the Templars would be forthcoming in their plans.”

“It’s doubtful,” agreed Florianne.

“The marquis says they’re building a moat of shit around the settlement.”

Florianne blanched. “What?”

Caelus laughed and nodded and shrugged all at once. “It’s quite clever really. Demons are repelled by lyrium, which your southern Templars of course consume on a regular basis. They can’t waste lyrium on setting up a perimeter with it, but there are residual traces of it in the Templars’ leavings.”

Florianne’s stomach turned uncomfortably. “That’s disgusting.”

“It is,” agreed Caelus, a faint wrinkle in his nose. His tone had at once grown absent, as though his thoughts were absorbed elsewhere. “But also rather ingenious. My brother would find it amusing.”

“You have a brother?” asked Florianne. It was the first time she had heard Caelus mention a specific member of his family.

Caelus waved a dismissive hand, uninterested in divulging more information. To change the subject: “Speaking of Templars, I hear they’ve arrived in Val Royeaux.”

Florianne frowned. A sigh out her nose, and she looked back out the window. The sun had almost set, only a few stray rays of light left in the sky. “They have.”

The Templars had been resistant to Venatori influence thus far, but the Elder One had a trump card to play. Suspecting that the Templars might come her way, the Venatori had supplied Florianne with an amount of red lyrium. According to what she’d been told, it would corrupt the Templars and allow them to be controlled by the Elder One. It was just a matter of slipping a fraction of the substance to the Lord Seeker, their leader.

“I’ve already sent an agent to do the deed,” Florianne said.  

“Good,” said Caelus. “By this time tomorrow, the Templars will be thinking and doing as the Elder One wishes.”

The carriage passed under an archway, the dirt path giving way to cobbled stone. A silence spread between Florianne and Caelus, populated by the outside sounds of the horses’ clopping hooves and the dull chatter of cityfolk.

“I’ve had a thought,” Florianne said, choosing her words with caution, as though she wasn’t actually certain she’d had a thought at all.

“About?” Caelus asked, although he didn’t particularly sound like he cared.

“The Templars,” Florianne said, ignoring his tone. Caelus was stupid, as Florianne had experienced all young men in her life to be. And just like the rest, he made the mistake of thinking that Florianne was stupid as well. A quiet mind was not to be mistaken for an incompetent one, a lesson which Florianne was fine with Caelus learning the hard way.

“What about them?”

Smiling, Florianne said: “No matter how we try, we may be unable to claim the land Haven sits on. We cannot send a mage there. But maybe we don’t have to do either. The Templars in Val Royeaux could be our eyes and our ears, our influence. If they were sent to Haven, they could corrupt it from within.”

Caelus smiled as he listened, but his expression eased into something thoughtful, and then irritated. Florianne watched the change out the corner of her eye, each shift visible even in the growing dark. She raised her chin, daring Caelus to disagree with her, to mock her once more.

But instead he smiled again, and took one of Florianne’s hands in his own. Florianne’s fingers twitched in the beginnings of a protest, but it was half-hearted. She couldn’t deny that she wanted Caelus’s hands on her, even now, even after he’d continuously treated her as thought she was an idiot.

“ _Ma cherie_ ,” Caelus said, turning to her and looking into her eyes. Florianne couldn’t be certain anymore that she hadn’t just imagined how Caelus had talked to her all night when their gaze met. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a busy day yesterday and forgot to post this before heading to bed- sorry!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @[junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/). Sideblog for this fanfic is [ashiverofsharkswastaken](https://ashiverofsharkswastaken.tumblr.com/).


	9. Dorian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirror, mirror.

_ Ostwick, The Free Marches _

The ship Dorian would be taking to Ferelden was not scheduled to set sail for another five hours, and Dorian was at a loss on what to do with himself until then. Which is to say that Dorian Pavus desperately wanted a drink, but knew better than to allow himself to indulge in one. Times were delicate, which meant he needed to focus and put his best foot forward- which only made his need for a glass or seven of very fine wine all the more pressing.

He decided that a coffee would be sufficient instead. Harmless, rather. Not sufficient. Sufficient implied that coffee and alcohol were equal to one another in his eyes, and they most certainly were not.

In attempting to find a cafe that served coffee, Dorian quickly learned that coffee wasn’t a thing this far south, and that asking for it earned him looks of great concern and suspicion from the waitstaff. Dorian needed this even less than he needed to get drunk; being a Tevinter and a mage in the south was a dangerous thing, and Dorian’s journey could not be impeded by any ignorant southerners desiring to detain him and/or teach him a thing or two about how evil they thought his people were.

The lack of coffee and the ease of obtaining some sort of alcoholic beverage had Dorian engaged in a battle of wills with himself. He could go nearly anywhere and get a drink, and also probably a fire to keep warm by. Even when he tried to remove himself from the temptation, Dorian found that he was in the vicinity of yet another incredibly inviting tavern.

Dorian stared at the sign for _The_ _Wiggam_ like a child did the window of a confectionary. It smelled of food and drink and fire and it sounded like there would be good company in there.

In the periphery of his vision, Dorian spotted someone walking towards him. Blindly, Dorian turned towards them and asked more loudly than he intended to: “Where’s a good cafe?”

The Dalish elf paused, his eyebrows pulling together to form a thin line just above his nose. He had a dark tattoo on his soot-stained face that faintly resembled a bow and arrow, Dorian thought, and a look in his green eyes that was just short of murder. Dorian’s muscles tensed and he leaned away from the elf, even as a reflexive smile sprang to his face.

“Oh,” said Dorian.

“Have you seen a purple woman,” said the Dalish elf. For all the thunder in his gaze, his voice was flat.

“What an unnerving way of speaking,” Dorian replied, chipper. Glancing over the elf’s person, Dorian saw that the elf carried a bow. It would do him no good this close, at least not against a mage. The elf also had a series of small, slim blades on his belt. Dorian had little experience with knives outside of the sort used at a dinner table, but he could deduce from what he knew of the Dalish (which was admittedly little) that they were probably used for something related to hunting. They were all sheathed, and so also weren’t likely to be of immediate threat either. Dorian decided he would probably survive this encounter, and so added: “And as a matter of fact, I have. I saw her at the docks an hour or so ago. She looked about as happy as you.”

“What was she doing there.”

“Getting on a boat, of course,” Dorian replied with a laugh that suggested the purple woman’s purpose should have been obvious.

“What boat.”

Dorian realized that he might have perhaps revealed too much information about someone he didn’t know to someone he also did not know. Dorian thought to ask: “Why? What do you want with her?”

“I want to kill her,” the elf answered.

Dorian threw his head back and laughed, mostly because the completely deadpan delivery was more than a little frightening and Dorian had never learned how to react appropriately to fear. 

The elf just stared at him.

“She killed my family,” the elf said slowly. “My entire clan.”

Dorian didn’t know much about the Dalish, but he did know at least that they lived in communities called clans, like mobile cities. Shame made Dorian’s throat clench tight, and he stopped laughing. Cleared his throat, and forced himself to look the elf in the eye.

“I see. I suppose that’s a good enough reason to want to kill someone,” conceded Dorian.

“What boat,” the elf repeated.

Dorian noticed that the elf didn’t blink much, and while he had seen certain people use the technique to intentionally unnerve others, it did not seem to him as though the Dalish was doing it on purpose. In fact, the Dalish rather looked like he was in shock. Finding a drink suddenly didn’t seem too important.

“What’s your name?” asked Dorian, frowning. He tried to take on a gentle tone, but Dorian had never been good at comforting others- or himself.

Metal whispered against leather, and suddenly one of those blades that Dorian had not taken as a threat was pointed at his throat. The elf had closed the distance between them in a second, lips pulled back from his teeth in a trembling snarl. Dorian was too taken aback to react in any way other than raising his hands.

“Hey!” protested Dorian, and looked around for help. They earned a few passing glances, but no one was interested enough to intervene directly. Dorian hoped someone would go alert the authorities, or whatever passed for them down in the south.

“What. Boat,” the Dalish bit out, his teeth clicking around each word.

“I don’t know,” Dorian snapped, all the sympathy he’d felt for the elf gone.

“Where was it-” here, the elf paused, a look of confusion flickering across his face as he searched for a word he’d never had need to know, “-kept?”

His surprise abating, Dorian struggled to keep himself from lashing out. If the authorities were to come now, Dorian was hard-pressed to guess which one of them they might side with: the Dalish elf, or the Tevinter apostate. More likely than not, they’d both be arrested or drawn and quartered or put in the stocks. No, Dorian’s best bet would be in cooperating. This madman would have to let him go eventually… wouldn’t he?

“It was moored in dock three,” Dorian answered, trying not to sound bitter. “The dockmaster should have kept records. You can check with him.”

The press of the blade relented. Dorian clutched at his throat, and as he watched the elf retreat he decided that he did need a strong drink after all.

Hours later, and Dorian almost missed his boat. He stumbled aboard, and swore at the light rocking of the boat. It upset his stomach and undermined his balance. Dorian managed to take two steps towards the staircase leading below deck but made a detour to the portside railing to throw up into the harbor. He didn’t feel any better by the time he finished, no more sober, no less dizzy.

Dorian struggled to the deck below. The sleeping quarters were communal, and so there was always someone sleeping in there no matter the time of day. In order to get the ship sailing, most of the crew was on deck, and a number of the other passengers were as well. But one had decided to sleep through the process, just as Dorian had.

“Wise man,” Dorian commented as he made his way to his chosen hammock, glancing down at the other guest. What he saw made his brow furrow.

Dorian hiccuped.

“It’s you.”

The elf looked over his shoulder at Dorian. The heat in his eyes had died. Dorian squinted at him, because although there was only one elf Dorian was seeing four.

“You’re drunk,” the elf observed, his voice as soft as a caress from a night breeze.

“I’m  _ Dorian _ , actually,” corrected Dorian, wagging a finger at the elf before turning to his hammock and attempting to climb in. His hand slipped through one of the holes, and Dorian quickly found himself tangled in a mess he couldn’t manage in his current state.

“It figures,” Dorian said, and all at once his eyes stung with unwanted tears. But that figured, too: Dorian had always been a mopey drunk. At the moment, he couldn’t parse what he had to cry about. Everything seemed like a valid reason to break down, but also none of them were.

The elf said nothing.

Dorian made another futile attempt to disentangle himself.

“Are you going to help me?” snarled Dorian, trying to glare at the elf over his shoulder. The angle didn’t really allow for it. “Or am I going to have to sleep standing up here like a damn giraffe?”

Dorian hiccuped.

Although the elf did not speak, Dorian heard the hammock stress for the shift of the elf’s weight, and his feet touch the floor. The elf deftly worked Dorian free, grabbing Dorian’s wrist and pulling it out of the hole.

“Thank you,” huffed Dorian, and then decided against being polite: “Actually, it’s the least you owe me for-”

But Dorian lost whatever it was he was going to say, too tempted with the idea of sleep to continue on his short-lived tirade. The elf watched Dorian climb into the hammock without saying anything, and then returned to his own.

Someone pushed a bowl of porridge into his hands the next morning.

“Eat,” an all-too-familiar voice said. “You’ll feel better.”

“I doubt that,” groaned Dorian.

Under normal circumstances, Dorian considered himself to be a perfectly functional drunk. The hangovers were always terrible, but by now they’d become almost second-nature to him, something dealt with as easily as putting on socks. Circumstances were not normal, however. He was on a boat. He was headed to a different country. To try and talk some sense into the most sensible man he knew. And he was accompanied by a Dalish elf that had tried to stab him in the throat the day before. None of the tools in coping with the aftermath of a nasty night of drinking would work for him now, therefor.  

Dorian’s head throbbed. His stomach churned. When he opened his eyes even a crack, it felt as though he was being repeatedly stabbed in the face by many, many knives. The effort he made to eat was valiant, but in the end Dorian wound up falling asleep again. He threw up again over the side of his hammock some time later, and only then did he start to feel better.

At least, until he became aware of the elf staring at him again. Dorian cleared his burning throat, put on his most winning smile, and inquired as politely as possible: “What exactly do you want?”

The elf frowned back at Dorian.

“I want to make sure you’re okay,” he said.

Dorian snorted. “Why certainly! I could tell you were very concerned for my safety when you put a blade to my throat yesterday.”

“I’m Yarahel,” said Yarahel.

“That’s an interesting way of saying ‘I’m sorry for almost punching a hole in your jugular and leaving you to bleed to death alone in the streets of a foreign city.’ Is it common in the south?” snarled Dorian. He remembered at once the porridge Yarahel had given him earlier that morning, but didn’t recall dropping it or setting it down anywhere- though it was gone now, save for a few crusty dribbles on his shirt.

“I’m not sorry,” Yarahel said.

Dorian felt Yarahel’s eyes on him as he picked at the debris on his shirt. In response, Dorian only scowled and shrugged a shoulder.

“You had information that I needed, and you weren’t sharing it,” Yarahel went on to say, speaking softly and slowly. Yarahel shrugged, too.

“Is that a hint of shame I detect in your tone?” asked Dorian sourly, glancing across the way at Yarahel. “Perhaps with undertones of gratitude?”

“Yes,” said Yarahel, meeting Dorian’s gaze.

“Oh.” Dorian frowned. He hadn’t been expecting that. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

They looked away from one another, Yarahel settling down into his hammock while Dorian sat up in his.

“I am thankful you told me what dock the ship was moored in,” Yarahel said.

“You found out where it was headed from the dockmaster, I take it?” sighed Dorian, looking over at the other man. For the first time, Dorian had noticed how long his hair was: it fell in a mass around his shoulders.

Yarahel said nothing for a long moment, his green gaze going distant, losing its focus. Dorian decided that Yarahel wasn’t likely to say anymore when at last he spoke up: “I did. To Ferelden. Her name is Silence. And she was with someone. Seia Corvanus.”

A chill passed down Dorian’s spine, and caught his breath. Dorian recognized that last name, and had an idea of who this Silence was. Corvanus was renowned for her qunari pet, rumored to be a mage- only in Tevinter she was known as  _ Silentium _ . Silence was a morbid curiosity, an exhibit in the circus that Corvanus made of her life.

Yarahel didn’t notice Dorian’s reaction, which helped to ease Dorian’s tensions somewhat.

“That’s a lot of information he gave you,” Dorian observed.

Yarahel raised his brows, but said nothing. He stared still, without seeing anything.

“That was an invitation for you to tell me how you convinced him to tell you all that,” Dorian explained after a minute of quiet passed between them. “Did you have to do a dance for him? Did he want a matching face tattoo?”

“No,” Yarahel said.

Dorian waited for more, but it didn’t come.

“All right,” Dorian said with an impatient wave of his hand, “Remain mysterious. What do I care?”

It took only a second for Dorian to decide that the silence was unbearably uncomfortable, and in order to break it he asked: “How do you know it was Silence, anyway? That killed your clan? And your family? These occurred together, I assume?”

Dorian had never met Silence in person before, but from what he knew of Corvanus he had a hard time imagining that she would encourage murderous behavior in her pet. The logic behind that seemed solid: best to not teach the thing that eats out of your hand that your hand might actually be a tasty snack, too.

“I saw her the day before,” Yarahel said.

“That’s… circumstantial at best,” Dorian noted.

Yarahel lifted his shoulders, eyes rolling with a shake of his head. “I just know.”

Dorian almost argued that that was an even more invalid reason to label someone a murderer, and then remembered that there was something he’d  _ just known _ for most of his life as well. He’d had that feeling called into doubt too many times by the people around him, and decided against doing the same to Yarahel over something equally, if not more, sensitive.

“Okay,” Dorian said instead. “You just know.”

Neither of them spoke, and in the pause that passed between them Dorian debated with himself whether or not he should tell Yarahel of the hunch that had been developing since the mention of Corvanus. If he didn’t, he might come to regret it. There was a strong chance that Silence and Corvanus were headed to the same place as Dorian, and if that were true then Yarahel wasn’t likely to take kindly to finding Dorian there with them at the end of things.

Dorian sighed the sigh of the long-suffering, and rubbed at his face.

“Yarahel, there’s something…” Dorian stopped himself, unsure of how he wanted to phrase any of this. If Yarahel had even heard him speaking, he gave no sign. “Excuse me, I’m trying to pass on delicate information to you! You could at least pretend to care!”

Yarahel turned his head to look at Dorian.

“I might know where Silence is headed,” Dorian said.

Suspicion immediately darkened Yarahel’s countenance. “What?”

“She and Corvanus, they’re from Tevinter. Same as I am. Lately there have been a lot of Tevinters leaving for Redcliffe in Ferelden, and since it’s unusual to find a Tevinter outside of the Imperium.” Dorian swallowed. “Well…”

Yarahel’s eyes narrowed to sharp points of mistrust. “Why are you going to Redcliffe?”

Somehow, Dorian had not expected that question to occur to Yarahel.

“My mentor is there,” Dorian sighed, irritated for feeling like he had to justify himself to this dirty stranger. “I want to bring him back home. He’s about to make a big mistake.”

“What mistake?” Yarahel questioned sharply, sitting up in his hammock.

“Oh dear, this is rather getting out of hand,” Dorian said, laughing nervously. In doing the considerate thing for Yarahel, Dorian hadn’t meant to put himself in a position where he had to reveal everything about what he was doing.

Yarahel waited for an answer, and Dorian could see that he was confident he’d get one. They both well-remembered what had happened the last time Dorian had been reluctant to answer his questions. Swallowing, Dorian rubbed at his throat.

“There’s a, ah,  _ being _ . Called the Elder One. The Tevinters headed for Redcliffe, they worship him as a god. My mentor- my  _ friend _ \- he’s turned to him in order to save his son. He might rupture the very fabric of this universe in exchange for his son.” The memory of Felix made Dorian feel as though he’d been punched in the gut.

Yarahel’s face twisted with a lack of comprehension. Dorian recalled that Dalish had their own set of gods they worshipped, and Dorian hoped the idea of a new one proved too much for him to tolerate.

The line between Yarahel’s brows eased, and he asked: “Save him from what?”

“Felix is sick,” Dorian answered tiredly, shaking his head. He turned away from Yarahel and reclined into the hammock. “With the Blight. He’s dying. There’s nothing anyone can do for him.”

Dorian’s mentor had once written to the Grey Wardens to see if they might recruit Felix into their ranks. It would part them forever, but at least that way Felix would have a chance of living. But Felix’s combat skills were far below being unremarkable. The Wardens had sent their condolences in their rejection letter.

“That’s sad,” Yarahel said, and laid back in his own hammock.

“How can you think that?” scoffed Dorian. “Everything you’ve ever had is gone.”

Yarahel said nothing.

Dorian said nothing.

The day the ship was due to make port in Ferelden, Dorian found Yarahel above deck, watching the horizon with his hands clasped behind his back. Yarahel’s person had been cleaned and preened over the journey, yet he somehow looked more frayed and exhausted than ever.

Dorian came to stand beside the elf.

“You’re going to ask around for her, I assume?” Dorian asked.

Yarahel drew in a deep breath through his nose, blinked once, and tipped his head away from Dorian.

“You know Dorian,” Yarahel said, “There’s something my parents used to tell me all the time when I was younger.”

Dorian frowned. Yarahel looked quite young already, but perhaps that could just be attributed to his elfy-ness.

“What’s that?” asked Dorian.

“‘Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.’”

Dorian smirked, eyebrows lifting. “Well, you are, aren’t you?”

“An ass?” asked Yarahel.

“Oh, you’re definitely an ass,” Dorian said, nodding. “There’s no question to that.”

Yarahel still hadn’t apologized to Dorian for putting a knife to his throat, and Dorian still hadn’t forgiven him for it. By this point, Dorian assumed they were both as okay with that as they were ever going to be.

“No,” continued Dorian, “Ask after her, I mean.

“I am,” said Yarahel.

“Well then. If signs point to her having gone to Redcliffe, we’ll go together,” Dorian told him matter-of-factly, deciding that things were too delicate now to argue with Yarahel about how he wasn’t an ass for making an entirely correct assumption.

Yarahel looked at Dorian.

Dorian didn’t look at Yarahel, and remained still under the elf’s careful scrutiny.

“You just want a bodyguard,” decided Yarahel.

“Oh, all right,” Dorian admitted with a flippant wave of his hand, “But can you blame me? When you’re this handsome…”

Yarahel narrowed his eyes at Dorian. Dorian narrowed his eyes right back at him.

“The Dalish are feared by everyone,” said Yarahel. “A Dalish guarding a human would have to have gone mad.”

Dorian had to bite his lip to keep from asking:  _ haven’t you? _

Dorian saw doubt in Yarahel’s eyes, but nothing that suggested Yarahel had intuited that unasked question. 

“Okay,” Yarahel said, and released Dorian from his gaze.

“Okay,” Dorian said, and let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr @[junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/). Sideblog for this fanfic is [ashiverofsharkswastaken](https://ashiverofsharkswastaken.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @ [junglebright](https://junglebright.tumblr.com/).


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